


The Translocation

by Derin



Series: Parting the Clouds [16]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-05-17 19:01:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 43,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5882017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Derin/pseuds/Derin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something strange is going on at the school. Something that the Animorphs need to check out. Unfortunately, investigation is quickly put on hold when the Animorphs find themselves suddenly teleported across the galaxy to an andalite military ship, and thrown into yet another ongoing conflict in the yeerk-andalite war. Far from home, the Animorphs may be the only chance to keep the Leerans free from yeerk control. </p><p>With several problems to tackle at once and no obvious answers, the Animorphs need to work fast. Can they save Leera? How will they get home? Can they maintain a good impression among the andalites and convince them that among their stretched resources and multiple battlegrounds, Earth is worth saving? And now that Ax has found his people once more and his oath to Jake is complete, can his help -- or his friendship -- be counted on?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this is late. I apologise.
> 
> We are two books away from the end of the first of 4 planned arcs, what I like to call the "lag phase" of this rewrite. This will culminate in the first Alternamorphs (which bears no story similarity to the canon ones) and a three-month hiatus. I'm hoping to get the Alternamorphs up before the hiatus but I can't promise anything as it is difficult to write.
> 
> Much thanks to JustAnotherGhostwriter, who has generously loaned her awesome betaing skills and general support to this project from start to finish and without whom this would almost certainly not exist (and would certainly be much worse), and Pawnofanellimist, as well as my innumerable temporary beta readers. Also thanks to Featherquillpen, who came up with the series title.

My name is Cassie. I have strange hobbies.

<Your second finger needs to be held more parallel to your palm,> Ax explained, peering at the hand signal I was trying to make. Faced with my shorter, fewer, and differently jointed fingers, he had long given up trying to make my andalite speak eloquent, and was settling for decipherable.

I adjusted my finger as directed, and he gave a nod. _Thank you, Aximili,_ I signed. The last syllable was really tricky to manage with my fingers. I felt like a two-year-old trying to write with a broken crayon. More than once I'd been tempted to just sign _Ax_ , but that seemed a little impolite.

Come to think of it, we'd never actually asked if he minded being called Ax. We'd just stuck him with the nickname because the full version was difficult to learn to pronounce. I had no idea whether it was normal for andalites to give each other diminutive names, or even if it was offensive – and I couldn't remember him ever introducing himself to anybody as 'Ax'. He always said 'Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill', or, if he was being friendly, 'Aximili'.

Huh. Awkward. I stared at my own hands. It was probably too late to ask about the verbal name thing, but if he wanted me to sign his name as 'Aximili' then I was just going to have to put up with the strain.

“Ax, you call Jake Prince because that is the andalite equivalent of your commanding officer, yes?”

<That is correct.>

“Is there a title that I should be using for you when you're teaching me?”

Ax smiled. <A cultural teacher is an _ethil_. Like this. > He signed it for me. <It can be added to a name with this palm twist.> Again, he demonstrated, lifting his right wrist and palm a little and rotating them into a position that, to my untrained eye, made getting the finger positions for his name look a lot easier.

 _Thank you, ethil Aximili_ , I signed.

 _You learn quickly_ , he signed back. I tried to follow his words, but he signed quickly and used some signs I didn't know. _I predicted ----- slow ----- people who don't ----- talk-hands_.

“Humans have sign languages too,” I said, massaging my aching wrists. “I don't know any of them, but we're perfectly capable of talking with our hands.”

Ax's stalk eyes stretched high in surprise. <But you speak so often with mouth-sounds. Surely that it the natural way for you to communicate?>

“And you speak so often using thought-speak,” I said, raising my own eyebrows. “Most people who use sign languages do it in situations where it's hard to speak or hear – diving, disaster zones, deaf or mute people.”

<Ah, of course. Well, I am sure such human sign languages are of little use to you.> A cold tone had crept its way into his mental words. <But when the andalite fleet comes, you will be able to communicate more easily.>

I made an effort to stop myself from rolling my eyes. “Of course, the glorious andalite fleet.” I really shouldn't be so dismissive – the 'glorious andalite fleet' were going to save our butts. We didn't really stand a chance without them. But Ax's smug andalite superiority could get irritating very fast.

<They will come when they can,> he said, apparently misunderstanding my sarcasm. <Perhaps by destroying the shark army for Leera, we have helped slow the yeerks there and thus hastened the fleet's ability to respond to the danger here. We simply need to 'hold the fort', as you humans say, and then Prince Jake and the rest of you can step down and let the fleet take care of it.>

“Ax, you do realise that our culture is different. Jake's not a – ”

<I know what he is!> Ax's tone was unexpectedly harsh, and I think I might have flinched. His tone became gentler. <I know what all of you are. None of you were trained for this. None of you asked for this. There is not a soldier on this planet to fight this threat except for...>

“Except for you,” I said quietly.

<And I am no warrior. I try to behave like one. But I am only half-trained. I am an _aristh_. And an _aristh_ has a Prince to command him. The only situation in which he would not is if he were completely alone and lost. >

I reached up to touch Ax's shoulder. “Ax,” I said, “we might not have been trained for this, but we're here. And you're not alone.”

<I know.> Ax gave me a smile. I was getting the hang of andalite facial expressions (it's all in the eyestalks), and I think it was a very wry smile. <And I am grateful to have Prince Jake, and to have the rest of you as my cousins of the tail.>

“Hey there, Ax, Cassie,” Marco said, stomping his way into Ax's meadow. “You're here early, Cassie. Thought-speak range experiment?”

“Andalite language lesson,” I corrected, rubbing my wrists again. I generally had pretty good hand strength because I had to use them for a lot of different delicate tasks in the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic, but the sign language was about to give me RSI.

“Where do you even find the time for all this stuff?”

“Sorcery, probably. Also I don't spend all afternoon playing Doom.”

Marco rolled his eyes, looking for all the world like somebody who hadn't found and then lost his mother again about a month ago and who was probably responsible for killing her. “Feeling better, Ax?”

<I am fine, Marco, thank you,> Ax said somewhat stiffly.

“Fine?” I asked. “Were you sick?” We still had no idea what the environment would do to Ax. Visser Three (and the yeerks, hork-bajir, and taxxons, for that matter) seemed to show no concern whatsoever over the possibility of naturally occurring chemicals that humans had evolved amongst being toxic to organisms that evolved on entirely different planets, so it was possible that my concern was unfounded. But it seemed strange that he had been doing so well.

<I was fine. I am fine. It is nothing.> He flicked a stalk-eye dismissively.

“Are we all here, then?” Rachel asked. She and Jake were coming up behind Marco. Her eyes flicked to the sky. “Where's Tobias?”

<He will be here soon,> Ax said. <He is doing a security sweep.>

“Out in the woods?”

<Ax has been worried since the hork-bajir thing,> Tobias explained, landing on a branch right behind Rachel's head and making her jump. <He's worried they'll try the whole 'rooting out the andalites in the forest' thing again and bring back the taxxon trackers.>

<We are too close to human civilisation for such a plan to be practical,> Ax pointed out, <but if the yeerks get desperate enough, they may try it. I have placed proximity sensors in the area already, in case they come too close. But it is good to take every precaution, especially if we are meeting here.>

“Why are we meeting here?” Rachel asked.

Jake counted the reasons off his fingers. “Because Tom is at my place, your place is being painted, Marco's dad and Nora are having a stay-at-home dinner date, we meet at Cassie's barn way too often and it's starting to look weird, and certain people need to steer clear of the mall for awhile until other people forget what they look like.”

“'Certain people?'” Rachel shot Marco a suspicious glare. “What did you do?”

Marco had collapsed against a tree, laughing. He got enough breath to say, “For once, I did nothing, I swear.”

“Then what – ?”

<It was an easy miscalculation to make,> Ax said stiffly.

“'Miscalculation'?” I asked.

<I do not consider it an important enough event to relay,> he said primly.

“That's okay, Ax, I can relay it.” Marco seemed to have gotten enough breath to speak.

<Marco – >

“So I go to the mall to get that new Snoop Dogg CD, right? And – ”

“You? Pay for a CD?” Rachel fluttered her eyelashes in mock innocent surprise. “What, with money?”

“Yes. Shut up. I'm moving through the food court, thinking, why not snag a taco? After all, it's a nice day. Low noise level. Very short lines. Not all that crowded, except of course for the small crowd around the paramedics outside the Cinnabon.” He grinned.

“Oh, this cannot be good,” I moaned.

“My thoughts exactly. So I go up to the crowd and I ask someone what's going on. And she says – ”

“She?” Rachel asked. “You mean, you saw a good-looking girl who would normally never talk to you and you figured a medical emergency would be a good time to hit on her?”

“Exactly. I'm just circling around to my pitch, and I have an excellent pun about ambulances all lined up, when she cuts right across me and says that some kid went crazy and ate a whole tray of cinnamon buns. And there's this guy sitting there, looking really familiar, shaking with a blanket around his shoulders while the paramedics take his blood pressure and earnestly trying to explain to one of them, 'I was clearing tables! Tay-buls!'”

I did feel kind of bad for Ax. But that might just be the oxygen deprivation, because it was difficult to breathe while I was laughing so much. Rachel, too, was laughing, and slowly sinking to her knees. I leaned back against a tree.

“So anyway,” Jake said, pinching the bridge of his nose, “we're steering clear of the food court for awhile.”

<I had overestimated the capacity of the human stomach,> Ax said defensively. <I assumed it would take up a greater portion of the volume of the torso. There also appears to be some sort of chemical or hormonal reaction upon ingesting large quantities of food that I was unprepared for.>

“Sugar,” I said, calming down. “That's the sugar. You shouldn't eat so much of it at once.” I glanced at Marco. “What was your ambulance pun?”

“No!” Jake held up a hand. “Mission. We are here for a mission. Let's try to stay on track, people.”

“But it – ”

“Later! Tobias? What's the issue?”

<I spoke to Melissa Chapman yesterday.>

“Why?” Rachel asked.

<Because she had information for us. Should I have ignored her? Anyway, one of her agents – >

“'Agents',” Marco muttered. “Like they're some kind of cool underground spy network. At least we don't give ourselves airs.”

“They are an underground spy network,” Rachel pointed out.

I added, “Marco, you gave us a portmanteau name, call Rachel 'Xena, warrior princess', and compare us to the X-men on a regular basis.”

“Yeah, well... we have superpowers and they don't.”

<One of Melissa's agents has been trying to find out about a new yeerk plot that seems to be centered on the school,> Tobias powered on in the tone of one whose train of thought would not be derailed. <They're moving stuff around at night. The Star Defenders aren't sure what, but it's big, it's in crates, and they're being really secretive about it, to the point where they're not even letting Controllers who aren't involved near the stuff.>

“Why are they doing this aboveground?” Marco asked. “If they want to be secretive, don't they have an enormous underground cavern for that?”

<Yeah. That's what's weird.>

“They might be installing something on school grounds,” Rachel said thoughtfully. “Something too alien to just cover up as normal construction. We can't just let that go.”

<Whatever it is, the Star Defenders can't get in; there are no crowds, no unknown Controllers to mix with. They've been trying to get a peek during school hours but it's too high-risk. Melissa wants us to sneak in and relay what we find back to them so they can formulate a plan.>

“No,” Rachel said.

Marco cocked an eyebrow. “What, no 'let's do it'? You're going soft, Rachel.”

She shook her head. “Not the Star Defenders. They can't heal, they can't shapeshift. This is way too dangerous for them.”

“If we don't help,” I pointed out, “they'll go ahead and do it themselves. That's way more dangerous.”

Rachel shot me a glare. “Do you enjoy backing people into impossible moral corners to make them do what you want, Cassie, or is it just habit?”

“ _Rachel_ ,” Jake growled warningly. Rachel raised a challenging eyebrow at him and stepped forward.

“Whoah, Xena,” Marco said, stepping between them. “Wrong place, wrong time. We need a pit of mud. And bikinis. And Jake should be a girl.”

“You're such a pig, Marco.”

“Does that mean I can get in the mud with you?”

“Whether we want to encourage the Star Defenders or not, we have to check this out,” Jake said. “Maybe we need to take this mission on ourselves. Step one is still the same.”

“If we take the mission on ourselves, that'll discourage them from coming to us next time they need help,” I pointed out. “So next time – ”

“Is this the 'my kids can drink but only in the house' line?” Rachel asked. “You're pulling that line on us?”

<How about,> Tobias suggested, <we check out the school thing and then start talking about whether it's too risky or not after we know what's actually going on?>

Rachel and I both nodded, reluctantly.

“Alright,” Jake said, “so we break into the school. Ideas?”

<We can simply morph tiny creatures,> Ax pointed out. <We have done so before. Unless they are expecting us, they will probably not have large supplies of poison on hand.>

“We can't do insects,” Rachel said, “now that we've got these brain chips from the... you know.”

“From the underwater base, which we collapsed on top of Vissers One and Three,” Marco finished. “You can say the whole sentence.”

There was an awkward pause. Jake cleared his throat.

“So,” he said. “Not insects.”

“Probably not shrews and lizards either,” I said, wrinkling my face up in thought. “Tobias said these chips were about the size of a quarter. They don't seem to be doing any harm in his head, but I wouldn't want to go smaller.”

“Owls?” Rachel shrugged.

<Good for outdoor surveillance, but we still might need something for inside,> Tobias said.

“Can't pretend to be Controllers, can't go too small to be noticeable,” Marco sighed. “Hey Cassie, there isn't some kind of giant chameleon that you happen to have in your barn, is there?”

“Contrary to popular belief, the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center does not function solely as a source of DNA for shapeshifting guerilla warriors,” I said. “And chameleons don't have nearly as good camoflage as the cartoons would have you believe. Now, cuttlefish, on the other hand...”

“The last time we infiltrated the school, the Star Defenders took us up into the roof,” Rachel said thoughtfully. “They have secret passages up there.”

“They're clearly not enough, or they wouldn't have contacted us,” Marco said.

“Not enough for humans, maybe. But plenty of animals live in roofs, and they can probably move about up there more. Some of them have to have heads big enough for us.”

“Squirrels,” I said. “Opossums, maybe. I mean, even housecats might work. I have a squirrel morph already, and there's usually one or two in the Center.” I winced at Marco's smirk, but he didn't say anything.

“Right,” Jake said. “Let's go get some squirrel morphs.”

“Hey Tobias, don't eat anyone, okay?” Marco called over his shoulder as we traipsed out into the trees.

<Marco, I'm going to tell you what dozens of girls have already told you – I'd rather die than put my mouth on you.>

“Well, given how dangerous these things always turn out, that's not as encouraging as it should be,” Marco muttered.


	2. Chapter 2

There was, in fact, a squirrel in the barn, a detail which Marco was insufferably smug about. I'd had very little practice with my squirrel morph, having acquired it for science, and the others had had no practice whatsoever, so we headed off for a quick session in the woods before finding ourselves in unfamiliar bodies surrounded by on-guard yeerks.

The squirrel was hyper. Man, was it hyper. Rachel described it as some kind of bizarre cross between a cat and a shrew. On the one hand, it was on constant alert for predators from above, like Tobias. On the other, it had absolute confidence in its ability to be on pretty much any surface it wanted. Up a tree? No problem. Telephone pole? Easy. Along a wire upside down? Sure.

This was, in fact, how we snuck into the school.

Tobias kept watch in owl morph, a silent presence in the skies. We needed somebody in the air and his experience as a bird made him the obvious choice. (Nobody said that his nervousness about morphing also made him the obvious choice – the screech owl wasn't too different from his normal form, although it was less than half the size, and he could demorph as often as he felt he needed to.) The rest of us climbed along the bottom of a power line in a little furry row, skittering right over the heads of some oh-so-casual Controller guards.

<I bet I could jump over to that other power line like it was nothing,> Rachel commented as we moved. <Squirrel gymnast!>

<The squirrel I morphed got fried on a power line,> I warned her. <That's why she was with us. It happens if you touch two at once.>

<You know, Cassie,> Marco said, <that's something that maybe could have waited until we were in the school. Or as a warning before we infiltrated the school. Basically any time, any time at all, except for the moment when we are in fact hanging upside down from a power line.>

To be fair, we weren't hanging upside down from a power line for very long. Squirrels are _fast_. Marco had barely finished speaking when I twisted around and touched my tiny paws to the ground, then sped along the ground to the school. I found a pipe leading down from the gutter. Zooooom! Straight up I went. Up, down, straight, who cared? I could move on anything.

Five little squirrels, all sitting on a roof.

<There's a piece of roof around here somewhere that comes away,> Rachel said. <She pulled us up through... here it is.>

<Cassie,> Jake said, <can you move it, please?>

<Sure.>

Five squirrels wouldn't have the strength to open it. Somebody needed to demorph. Ax was the obvious choice, as a human on the roof infiltrating the building would be rather harder to explain if we were caught, but on the other hand an andalite trying to keep his balance on the sloped surface would be really, really obvious if somebody happened to look up. So, since the others had decided somewhere along the line that I was the 'best morpher' (it's called practice and a basic understanding of biology, but whatever), the job fell to me.

I demorphed and lifted the piece of roof away. Squirrels poured into the gap around me. I followed, pulled it carefully closed, and started to remorph.

<Okay,> Jake said, <spread out. Find some vents and watch for Controllers doing anything suspicious.>

<What constitutes suspicious behaviours for Controllers who are not being observed by the public?> Ax asked.

<Anybody who isn't a guard, basically. Anybody building or moving anything. Listen to any conversations. Let's try to nail down exactly what's going on.>

Everyone scampered off in a different direction. I completed the morph and picked a direction of my own.

On the one hand, I was nervous scampering about without backup, and that wasn't just the squirrel talking. On the other, I was glad to be spared Marco's inevitable Diehard jokes while I crawled through ventilation systems. (I'd watched the movie on Jake's recommendation. I didn't agree that it was 'the best Christmas movie ever', but each to their own, I guess.)

Finding a good spyhole wasn't hard. I just followed the sound of voices.

Through a pipe, into the walls. I could hear Controllers talking somewhere ahead of me, their voices faint. They became more distinct as I got closer to the vent, until I was right up against it, watching them. A boy I didn't know, although he looked about old enough to be in our school, and a silver-haired security guard I'd seen about.

“We're running out of storage,” the boy said. “Secure space is somewhat limited up here.”

“Yeah, that's going to be an ongoing problem until we get on top of this,” the guard muttered, wringing his hands.

The kid squinted at him. “Temrash?”

“Hmm?”

He lowered his voice. “You're not Craving, are you?”

“What? No! You know me better than that!”

“It's just they're saying there's a problem among the guards – ”

“Among idiots with no self-control on the front line? Obviously.”

“You weren't in the Pool yesterday.”

“I switched my schedule about. I told you I was gonna switch my schedule about. I had to make sure it wouldn't conflict with the kid's basketball games.”

The boy watched him for a long time. Then he nodded. “Okay. I believe you.”

“I should hope so.” The security guard crossed his arms. “They've started moving excess to the janitor's closet next the the Assistant Principal's office.”

“That doesn't sound very secure. What if one of the natives finds it?”

The guard shrugged. “What if? They'd probably do us a favor. Anyway, that's where I'm ordered to direct people.”

Janitor's closet next to Chapman's office. Easy enough. With the occasional grate to peek out of, finding the right part of the right hall wasn't difficult.

Getting into the closet... that might be.

My tiny squirrel hands couldn't open the door. It was too risky to demorph in the hall. I guess I'd have to wait for a Controller to open it, rush in, and hope they didn't notice me.

Nothing could possibly go wrong there.

<Cassie?> Jake's voice, in my head. <Are you around? We're near Chapman's office.>

<I'm looking at the janitor's closet next to it right now,> I replied. <Where are you?>

<Above it, in the roof.>

Oh. Duh.

We could just break our way in through the roof.

I wasn't sure how to do so stealthily, but it was probably something to look into before trying any mad hall dashes under Controller feet. I retreated to join the others. Five little squirrels in a group above the ceiling.

<Tobias,> Jake called, <any problems?>

<All clear,> he replied. <You found it yet?>

<We're just about to.> Jake turned his adorable little face towards the group and fixed his beady little eyes on each of us in turn. <Any ideas to – >

I didn't hear the end of his sentence. I was no longer in the roof. I was no longer in the school. I didn't know where I was, but it was dark. And endless.

And I couldn't breathe.


	3. Chapter 3

There was... space. But no space. Also, I clearly wasn't in space, because there were no stars. The lightless void was pure white.

The English language doesn't seem entirely capable of conveying just what it was like. I couldn't see, but I could feel myself in that passive way that everybody can, knowing where their limbs are and soforth. I could feel that I was human. But in a strange way, I could feel the others, too. I could feel the position of Jake's limbs, somewhere to my left and a little behind me but also exactly where I was, stiffened with panic and surprise. I could feel Ax's stalk-eyes scanning the darkness. I could feel Tobias flapping to gain traction in the nonexistent air. I could feel something massive, something that wasn't where I was but was definitely ahead of me, a huge imposition of white noise and mass.

Since becoming an Animorph, I'd spent a lot of time suffocating. I was becoming something of an expert. I knew the difference between something obstructing your face or throat, and the panic of not being able to draw a breath because you're paralysed. I knew what it was like to have salt water creep into your throat, to fight against the choking reflex that was stopping your lungs from filling with liquid, and what it was like to draw liquid in as your size expands during a morph, or to have your lungs fill from the inside with blood. I knew what it was like to try to drag air through your drying gills, or to try to breathe and not have gills or lungs at that particular moment.

Suffocating in a vacuum was new. There didn't seem to be any air in my lungs, and I could expand and contract them as much as I wanted; there was nothing to draw in. It was an entirely alien feeling, a feeling I had no biological ability to properly process. I was pretty sure I could feel my own lungs collapsing. I tried, in a panic, to morph, as if I had a morph that could actually help. Nothing happened.

<Ax?!> Jake asked in thought-speak, thought-speak that he shouldn't have in his human form, but there were more important things to worry about.

<Zero-space!> Ax said, sounding bewildered and confused. <I... I think we are in zero-space. There's a ship ahead! Should I – >

<Yes, do it!>

What Ax transmitted next had no words. It was a burst of emotion and concept. It reminded me a little of our first communication from him, a distress signal from the ocean. But, my human mind being a human mind, I automatically translated it into words as I felt it.

<Attention andalite ship. We have been caught in your temporal stasis field and we are dying. Attention andalite ship. If you can hear me...>

He had to have been terrified, but there was very little emotion in the transmission. It had, if anything, the flat delivery in which he normally delivered mid-battle news that meant we were probably about to die. Encouraging.

I could feel myself dying, too. I could feel us all dying. I could feel Tobias' tiny little heart beat frantically, and then stop. I could feel Rachel squeeze her eyes shut with eyelids barely strong enough to close. I could feel _nothing_.

I woke up with Rachel breathing into my lungs.

I coughed, pushed her away. Rolled over. Tried to be sick, but of course there was nothing in my stomach. I sat on some kind of metal table – not very high, no higher than the back of a pony perhaps, but in my weakened state the journey to the floor looked impossible. I rolled back.

“Aren't you glad I made you take that first aid course now?” I asked Rachel weakly.

She smiled at me, but it didn't reach her eyes. Panic shot through me. See, I know a few things about first aid that most people don't. Bringing somebody back from the dead, even in the best conditions, even if you get to them immediately... most of the time, it doesn't work. And when it does, there's usually damage. Most organ damage wasn't a problem for us Animorphs, but brain damage was frighteningly common, and I didn't know how well that sort of thing would morph away. Not that it mattered that much; we could accept brain damage if it meant...

“The others,” I said, panic in my voice.

“Fine! Fine, so far as we can tell. The andalites have medical devices to help. I told them everything I knew about the human heart and about hawks and... well, everyone seems fine.”

<Tell me, were you born without a tail?>

The speaker was unfamiliar, but I knew immediately from their method of speech that they were andalite. I twisted my head, trying to ignore the way it made the world lurch.

The andalite in question was older than Ax. He was larger, about the size of Visser Three, and the blue in his fur had faded a little. With one stalk eye on Rachel and one on some kind of computer array behind him, his main eyes were focused on my hand, which he picked up and started poking at, pulling the fingers apart and seeing how they moved. He wasn't hurting me, so I let him.

“This is Doctor Coaldwyn-Ashul-Tahaylik, physician of the andalite assault ship Ascalin,” Jake said, tongue stumbling over the andalite terms, as the doctor's fingers investigated the two bones in my forearm – the radius and ulna. He lifted my arm and turned it over, watching the bones slide over each other. I wondered if he'd let me inspect his arm like that. Probably best not to try to find out.

I sat up and turned to face Jake, standing behind me. His face was blank, or at least, he was trying to keep it blank. He was failing somewhat. There was concern in his eyes, and his mouth was tight. Marco stood behind his shoulder, looking somewhat less stressed but nevertheless very serious.

“Tobias?” I asked weakly. “Ax?”

<I'm fine,> Tobias said, fluttering down from somewhere above to land on the steel table next to me.

“They won't let us see Aximili,” Marco informed me. I caught the warning in his eyes, the brief glance at the doctor, and understood. I didn't know how we'd been pulled out of our tame little mission and ended up on an andalite ship, but that was where we were. So far as we knew, we were the first humans to have any real interaction with andalites. We weren't just rescuees. We were ambassadors, and it was very, very important that we left a good impression. Everything we did on the Ascalin was a petition on behalf of our planet.

Ax had been right – none of us had trained for this war. And this wasn't how I had wanted this to happen. I'd expected to meet the andalites on Earth, after a fair amount of warning. I'd expected to have time to learn their customs, their protocols. But this was happening now. In Zero-space. Far from home. _Deal with what is, Cassie_ , I told myself. Ax had never been shy about his opinion that a lot of our customs were stupid. He'd have to be our template.

_What would Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill do?_

I gave Marco a short nod. He returned it. And I looked back to my Prince.

“What do we do?” I asked.

Jake clapped his hands together, businesslike. “Are you alright?” he asked.

The doctor's fingers had finished poking at my shoulder and were straying down my collarbone towards my sternum. I slapped him away, glaring, and Rachel stepped forward, fury flashing in her eyes as if fully prepared to leap right over the table to attack him. It took me a moment to realise that of course the andalite doctor wouldn't understand human modesty. I put an arm up to hold Rachel back and shook my head, very slightly. She didn't look happy about it, but she stepped back.

Coaldwyn, to his credit, seemed to have realised that he'd made some sort of mistake, and started busying himself with some kind of computer across the room. He watched us with one stalk eye as he worked. Vaguely familiar holographic symbols hovered in the air in front of him – andalite lettering. A wave of dizziness overcame me and I laid back down.

“You okay?” Rachel asked quietly.

“Yes.” There was nothing wrong with me that a morph couldn't cure, probably. And if there was, there was nothing that we could do about it. I sat up again, trying to rely on my hands to tell me where the table was instead of my sense of balance, and swung my legs over the side. Rachel jumped up to sit next to me, as if we were just sitting on the edge of her bed to do homework together. Or discuss death-defying guerilla warfare strategies. Tobias was perched next to her on the edge of the table. Marco leaned back against the wall, and Jake stood stiffly, arms crossed, his eyes taking us all in.

Coaldwyn finished whatever he was doing on the computer, shut it down, and left. The door closed behind him with a _whoosh_ , Star Trek style. I took stock of the room. There were other metal tables throughout the room, spaced at regular intervals, with complicated-looking equipment above them. They were really too large for us humans, but they looked about the right size to hold an andalite, and were raised to what I supposed was a comfortable working height for an andalite doctor. There was the computer in the corner, which I didn't want to mess with. The room was lit, but I couldn't see the lights; nor did any shadows fall on the table beneath me. As soon as the door closed and we were left alone, the entire room relaxed.

<There may still be security cameras,> Tobias warned us. The yeerks had never really used video surveillance, but the andalites might. So we should be careful about what we said or did, if there was anything we wanted to hide.

I was being much too suspicious, I realised. We all were. We'd gone straight into yeerk prisoner mode. But these people weren't our enemies. They were our saviours. If anything, they should know as much about us and our planet as possible.

Still, Tobias was right. We should keep in mind the possibility of security cameras. Just in case.

“So,” I repeated. “What do we do?”

Jake pursed his lips in frustration. After a few seconds he seemed to realise that we were all looking at him and said, “We've been given very little information. We know the name of the ship, we know that they won't let us see Aximili. Doctor Coaldwyn seemed very excited about our presence, and not just the biology – apparently we've overturned a large part of zero-space theory. He didn't elaborate.”

“As much as I love revolutionising physics in my spare time,” Marco said, “we were kind of in the middle of a mission. And since we didn't know we were coming and didn't have any ch... anybody covering for us, if we're here for too long it's going to cause somewhat of a secret identity problem. So I'd say that finding a way to get home is pretty vital.”

“Yeah,” Rachel said, “but how? I was under the impression that the andalite fleet was kind of far away from Earth? Isn't that the problem?”

“If there was a way to replicate how we were brought here...” I said thoughtfully.

“Then we could suffocate in z-space with nobody to pick us up?” Marco asked incredulously.

Right. That.

Focus, Cassie.

The door opened again, with another _whoosh_. I looked up, expecting the doctor. Instead, I saw somebody much more welcome.

“There you are!” Marco exclaimed. “I don't suppose you can tell us what's going on?”

Ax walked into the room, his bearing stiff, cautious. He looked around at us. <Are you all alright?>

“Fine, fine,” Jake said. “Where are we and what is going on?”

<It would appear that our excess mass in zero-space became caught in the Ascalan's temporal stasis field and caused an extrusion event, drawing us into z-space. You will recall that I have mentioned the possibility before.>

Marco screwed up his face in mock thought. “I seem to recall something along those lines. I seem to recall you using the phrase 'the odds are millions to one'. Also something about disintegration.”

“You have a good memory,” I observed.

“Only for things that scare the pee out of me.”

<Yes, well, it would appear that we have managed to avoid disintegration,> Ax said. <The Ascalin has just dropped out of zero-space and is heading at high speed for Leera. Doctor Coaldwyn-Ashul-Tahaylik says that there does not appear to be anything wrong with you that cannot be repaired the next time you use the power I gave you, but he is of course unfamiliar with human and hawk physiology.>

We knew how to heal via morphing, obviously. Ax was giving us two other important pieces of data – that the andalites knew that we could morph, and that he had obeyed his High Command and taken the blame for violating Seerow's Kindness.

“So,” Jake said, “how do we get back?”

<We are... not certain, at this stage. The physicists have hypothesised that there may be an automatic snapback effect. If not... well, it is quite a long journey, even through zero-space. As the Ascalan cannot deviate from its current mission, it is a problem that will need to wait.>

“Current mission,” I said. “You said we were headed for Leera?”

<Indeed. The yeerks have no defense of secrecy against the Leerans. All-out combat is taking place on the planet surface. The single continent is a giant war zone. The Escalin is an assault ship, which means that it contains several land attack vehicles, but we have less than a third of the forces available to the yeerks.>

“So we're a bazillion miles from home and being dragged into an enormous shooting war where the good guys are outnumbered three to one?” Rachel clarified.

<Correct.>

“Cool. How can we help?”

Marco shook his head in disbelief.

<You cannot. You are too valuable an asset to the fight on Earth to risk your cover via exposure to Leerans. In a similar vein it... may be best to limit your exposure to forces on either side of the war altogether.> A cryptic comment, but I knew what was weighing on his mind. Alloran had warned him, quite some time ago now, that the yeerks had infiltrated the homeworld. I hadn't even realised until Ax brought it up, but it made our very presence on the ship a danger to our cover. I had to assume that we were already in the ship's records. If any spies among the andalites were to learn of us, and the knowledge were to spread to Earth... <If you do get back to Earth,> Ax clarified in case anybody was slow on the uptake, <you would not survive the yeerks finding out who you are.>

“If,” Marco snorted. Rachel rolled her eyes. Jake rubbed at his temples. Tobias, though, perked up, stiffened, looked hard at Ax. He'd noticed. I didn't think the others had, but Tobias had noticed. The others had thought the important word in that sentence was 'if'.

They hadn't noticed the 'you'.

Not that I could blame Ax. He'd been isolated with us on Earth for a long time. He was back where he was meant to be, where he was trained to be. We needed him... but he needed his people. I could get that.

I didn't like it. But I could get it.

Ax was silent, one stalk eye on Tobias. I assumed that they were having a private conversation. We let them. I needed to think, anyway. There were so many things about the situation that were really, really dangerous. If the Leeran-Controllers found out who we were, it was over. If andalite Controllers learned who we were, it was over. There probably weren't Controllers on the Ascalin, because it would be kind of hard to hide a yeerk pool on an andalite ship, but I didn't know who read their records or how heavily they were scrutinised. Andalite High Command seemed pretty pro-censorship, though, so they would probably handle all that for us. (Obviously, the High Command weren't a problem; they already knew who we were.) So that really left the yeerks and the planet full of mind-readers, that we were headed towards at great speed. That were in the middle of a war. In which the good guys were badly outnumbered.

It was dangerous. It was definitely dangerous. But on the other hand, it was an opportunity. If we could do damage to the yeerk forces there, on Leera, then we could not only help the Leerans remain free but make sure that the andalite fleet could send reinforcements to Earth sooner. Not that there was probably all that much that we could do. I mean, our big advantages had been shapeshifting and the fact that the yeerks needed to maintain secrecy. Now we were amongst better trained and better equipped shapeshifters, fighting a force that wasn't trying to stay secret at all.

But Rachel crossed her arms. “Hey, if there's some yeerk butt-kicking to do, I'm in on it.”

<We have to obey the captain's orders,> Ax said stiffly.

“Says who?” Marco asked.

“Marco,” I said quietly. I raised an eyebrow at him. _Diplomacy, remember?_ He just smiled faintly.

“The captain hasn't ordered _us_ to do anything,” Jake explained gently. “We haven't even met the captain. Or, in fact, even been told his name.”

He was right, I realised. I'd assumed that Ax had... had wanted to come to talk to us, or something. But if he'd been sent as a messenger... what was that cover that Ax always used to account for why none of the rest of us would talk to Visser Three? Something about him, an _aristh_ , acting as a messenger so that the higher-ranked andalites wouldn't have to speak to the Abomination?

Suddenly, I wasn't feeling quite so diplomatic.

But Ax was looking nervous. I don't think the possibility that we wouldn't fall meekly in step under the andalites had occurred to him. <I have to obey the captain's orders,> he said, sounding apologetic. He turned his main eyes away from us. <I am just an _aristh_. That is my duty. >

“Ax,” Jake said quietly, “I understand. But we have a stake in this war, too.”

Ax turned his main eyes on him. He stiffened again. <A lot of people have a stake in this war, Jake.>

I felt the shock go through the group. Jake set his jaw. He tried to look like Ax's words hadn't bothered him, but despite his repeated requests for Ax to not call him 'Prince', they clearly had. He swallowed. Opened his mouth to say something. But he didn't appear to have anything to say.

Instead, Ax continued. <For your own safety, the captain has ordered that you remain in this room while we deploy for combat. Please do not attempt to move about the ship.> And with that, he left.

“Well then,” Rachel announced after several seconds of silence. “So that just happened.”

“At least we're prisoners of aliens who probably don't want to kill us this time,” Marco said. “That's an improvement.”

“Let's have a vote,” Jake said, a thread of anger in his voice. “Are we attempting to move about the ship?”

Three arms and one wing were duly raised.

“Yeah, that's what I thought.”

<I'm betting that door is probably locked,> Tobias said. <You guys think there's any air circulation between rooms? If it's airtight, even our smallest morphs won't help.>

“Doesn't matter. We can't go small,” I pointed out, tapping my own head.

<Maybe not. I mean, I don't understand exactly what happened here, but the idea is that our extra mass in z-space dragged us in while we were in morph, right?>

“What's your point?” Rachel asked.

<Well, I can't help but notice that you guys are in your morphing outfits.>

“That's logical,” I said, despite having none of the background knowledge I'd need to know if that was true or not. “The outfits are part of the – ” my eyes widened. “I get it. The implants _aren't_. They aren't part of the morph.”

<In theory,> Tobias said. <I mean, we don't have enough information to be sure.>

“But we sure can find out,” I said. I hopped off the table and focused. I no longer cared about security cameras or anything – if they were there, there was nothing we could do about it. I wasn't about to sit around while the great, glorious andalites went out to fight their battle and treat us like a general inconvenience.

I mean, it was possible I was misreading the situation. But I was pretty sure that the andalites were giving us no respect whatsoever. And since their fleet was the only thing that could save us, that was a pretty big problem.

I focused on fly.

Under the eyes of my friends, I shrank. That was the most important thing; size. I shrank smaller, smaller, until I came up to Marco's knee. Then his ankle. I kept shrinking. Three pairs of human eyes and one pair of a hawk watched me very carefully, preparing for something to start crushing my head from the inside at any moment.

I shrank. My skin became hard and shiny. My bones dissolved.

I shrank. My mouth stretched out into the long proboscis of a fly.

I shrank. Delicate gossamer wings lifted from my back. My sight exploded into a million tiny, fragmented images.

<Um,> I said, <guys? I seem to be okay.>

I was quickly joined by four other flies. (Thankfully, we'd picked up fly and cockroach morphs for Tobias when we got him an owl, since we seemed to use those morphs a lot.) Next order of business: check for a way out.

<I am so glad to be a fly again,> Marco said as we buzzed around the door. <Wow, that is a sentence I never thought I'd say.>

<It makes perfect sense to me, Marco,> Rachel said with mock innocence.

I spoke to Jake privately while we searched. <Jake. Are you okay?>

<Aside from being stranded billions of miles from home, yes. Why wouldn't I be?>

<He wasn't rejecting you, you know. He wasn't rejecting any of us.>

<I know that.>

<It's just that he's been alone so long.>

<He wasn't alone!> Jake snapped. But then he calmed down. <I mean... I know, Cassie. It must have been terrifying and lonely and all that, being stranded on an alien planet. And now he's home, so good for him. That's what we'd tried to accomplish in the beginning anyway.>

But he was still angry. I was still angry. Ax hadn't abandoned us; he was just going home.

It sure felt like he'd abandoned us.

We couldn't find any cracks or anything in the door, but there were several small holes in the wall near the ceiling, just big enough to squeeze our little fly bodies through. I'd seen what Ax called 'living metal' on yeerk ships, metal that could change shape and create new rooms and doors on command; knowing that the yeerks took their space travel technology from the andalites, it wouldn't surprise me if andalite ships were made of the same thing. As we crawled through the holes, trying not to damage our delicate wings in the confined space, I imagined them narrowing, the walls squeezing in as they closed...

And then we were out, into a corridor.

<You guys realise that we're basically in a bubble of air in unbreathable space, right? I mean, that's what a spaceship is,> Rachel pointed out.

<Thanks, Rachel,> Marco said. <That's exactly what I want to remember so soon after nearly suffocating. It's a really useful reminder.>

<Don't worry,> I said. <We've been in space before. It's fine.>

<You mean the Pool ship?> Marco asked. <Where we all almost died?>

<To be fair,> Tobias said, <there are a lot of places where we've all almost died. It's not a space thing.>

<Thanks for that, Tobias. You and Rachel make a good team. You should start a band together.>

<So where should we look for Ax?> Jake asked.

We were all silent for several seconds.

The corridor was long, with no obvious signs, and lined with unlabelled doors. Not helpful. Presumably, an andalite with military training would know how to navigate it. We didn't.

Below us, an andalite hurried down the corridor, looking like he had somewhere important to be.

<Let's follow that guy,> Marco suggested. <He seems to know where he's going.>

It's kind of hard to follow an andalite down in an otherwise empty space without being observed, but we managed to settle on his deer-like belly without him noticing and shielded ourselves from sight between his front legs.

<So we're basically chilling out in this guy's armpits, right?> Marco asked on cue.

<It's hard to be sure with a six-limbed creature,> I said wearily.

<Still, I hope he uses deodorant.>

Our andalite went up a dropshaft and stepped out into a wide,well-lit room. The floor was covered in tough blue grass, for some reason. I supposed that it was easier on andalite feet than the plain metal of the corridors, like having fancy carpet for important rooms or something. There were about a dozen other andalites around, some of them fiddling with computer consoles, others speaking to each other with swift, animated hand gestures. Many of them wore holsters around their... well, where their humanlike halves met their deerlike halves. Their waists, I suppose. A few of them carried electronic equipment, but most of them carried guns that looked an awful lot like Dracon beams. Ax and a much older andalite were watching a viewscreen on which little dots moved, signing to each other as they did so.

<What are they saying?> Jake asked me.

I tried to follow the rapid conversation. <I'm... not sure,> I admitted.

<I thought you spoke andalite?> Marco asked.

<I started learning a month ago. And these are two native speakers. And I'm trying to read this through compound eyes.> Actually, the compound eyes were better at tracking fast movement, but they weren't so good at shapes. <I think the other guy said Ax's name, maybe, if that helps. Also... something about feet?>

<Feet.>

<Or water. Possibly.>

<Okay,> Jake said. <Let's try to look around without getting noticed.>

That turned out to be easier than I'd expected. The andalites weren't doing much scanning with their stalk eyes like Ax usually did; they were glancing between each others' hands and tails as they focused their main eyes on whatever task they were doing. Apparently, they felt perfectly safe on their ship. I hadn't really considered it before, but since we'd pulled Ax out of the ocean, he'd been 'in the field' permanently. The little home he'd constructed for himself in the forest wasn't a home like mine or Rachel's or Jake's or Marco's; it wasn't even a home like Tobias' decidedly less safe tree. It was a military camp. One that the yeerks had tried to find before, and that he was prepared for them to try to find again. And this was on top of the stress and fear that all of us were under pretty much constantly, what with being an outnumbered little guerilla force fighting to save an entire planet. On the bridge, he looked... he looked nervous, actually. Maybe a little scared, a little overwhelmed. But at the same time he looked calm and confident, like he knew what he was doing. There was a kind of tension in his normal posture that I'd never even realised was there, because I'd never seen him without it. Since my entire exposure to andalites had been Ax, his dying brother, and a terrifying Controller, I'd never really had a good pool to draw on to learn andalite body language and behaviour. I'd never seen andalites so... well-fitted to their situation as they were in the ship. As Ax was in the ship.

It was kind of hard to resent him, seeing that. The andalites aboard the ship were treating us as an annoying inconvenience barely worthy of notice, but here they were preparing for a major campaign. If we'd been about to enter an important, potentially war-changing battle and had to stop to rescue some hork-bajir or something, we'd probably stash them somewhere and tell them to stay put until we were ready to deal with them too. Perhaps we were being a bit narrow-minded. And kind of harsh on Ax.

As I watched their conversation, I thought I could make more of it out. Although I could easily have been fooling myself. I knew a lot of random concepts that made up individual positions and movements inside the language, so I could kind of guess some words in the same way that speaking English let me kind of guess some French, but without having memorised most of the actual words they were using I couldn't really put the concepts together fast enough to keep up. They kept using one signal that had the 'being' component with an addition that looked kind of like 'water', which I supposed was their word for Leeran. The name of the andalite that Ax was talking to wasn't hard to pick out because names took all of both hands and broke up sentences by their very presence, although I didn't try to resolve it into syllables (I didn't know most of the syllables anyway). He used some kind of title, but I didn't recognise the palm twist. I was pretty sure it wasn't the captain. The captain was probably the guy walking briskly around the space giving orders to everyone. I focused on Ax, making out as much of the conversation as I could.

_... You think … aristh Aximili?_

Ax made some kind of negative gesture, which was immediately cut off by a more emphatic one from the older andalite, and a brief explanation I couldn't follow. Ax watched the screen a few more moments before gesturing again. _Yeerks strong... space... but, not-battle... space... battle, Leeran-cross-battle._

_Strong space... battle Leeran/andalite together?_

For half a second, Ax looked as lost in the conversation as I was. He looked embarrassed, like he'd made some kind of childish mistake. Since they seemed to be having a tactics discussion, he probably had.

The older andalite gave him a moment to think, then continued. _Aristh Aximili, other-type beings... not-together. Leerans type. Andalites other type. Yeerks together... Leeran/andalite..._

 _Yes, sir,_ Ax answered.

_Andalites together... andalites/others not-together... not-strong..._

I stopped watching. As interesting as andalite tactics and moral lessons probably were, I wasn't picking up enough for it to be useful. I wasn't even sure if I was reading the half-dozen or so terms I had picked up correctly. Instead, I took the opportunity to scout out the room.

Andalites everywhere; andalites typing away at consoles, andalites scrutinising screens of little patterns and coloured dots, andalites walking briskly back and forth to have brief conversations with each other... then one console, with an image I could actually recognise. Well, not the image itself. I could tell what it was an image of. A background of pure blue, broken up by the occasional tiny green irregular dot. In the center was a single large shape, a rough-edged blob of pale yellow streaked with green and red. A map.

Leera.

The captain had stopped to study the map, and I perched on his head for a better look. The map was overlaid with little triangles in red and blue and green. Red took up about three quarters of the continent, with blue and a few patches of green mixed in scattered throughout the other quarter. Green markers were also spread throughout the ocean. There were red markers in the ocean, too, and they and the green seemed to be involved in several skirmishes, but most of the markers were on the continent.

There were a lot more red markers than blue or green.

A warrior at a nearby console struck his tail against his own hoof and a loud crack thundered through the air, almost knocking me from my perch behind the captain's eyestalk. He mentally broadcast a message in the not-quite-words that andalites thought-spoke in.

<Dracon flashes! We have Dracon flashes on the continent. Now shredder flashes. The main conflict has begun!>

Instantly, the room came alive. Almost everybody rushed to a different console and began brushing their hands through holographic displays that appeared before them. Text flashed on the map in front of me, andalite letters flowing up the screen with a speed that made me dizzy enough to nearly fall off the captain. But he quickly turned away from the screen and headed to the andalite who was conversing with Ax.

A thought-speak message rang throughout the room, and presumably throughout the ship. A calm, measured mental voice; somebody old and experienced, it seemed.

<The action has begun on the continent,> the voice said. <There are heavy yeerk forces. Carry out plan seven four. To our Leeran allies: may your great god Cha-Ma-Mib smile on you this day. And to all andalite warriors: the People expect that every warrior shall do his duty.>

The message cut out. Maybe I was imagining it – fly eyes aren't great for detail – but it seemed to me that the warriors were acting more deliberately, standing straighter, after the message. The captain had reached Ax and his conversation partner, and I quickly stepped back around his eyestalk so that I wouldn't be in plain sight at the close range. I should've ridden on somebody that people wouldn't look at so much.

<Tactical Officer Harelin,> the captain said, <are you ready to deploy?>

The andalite Ax had been talking to looked slightly taken aback by the question, but replied in kind. <Yes, captain. All units ready as soon as we touch down on Leera.>

<Good. We are beginning the final descent. We should – >

<Captain, controls are frozen!> one of the warriors announced in open thought-speak, using the same even tones that Ax always used when reporting imminent death. <We have lost control of our descent.>

<Then reset them,> the tactical officer said, sounding annoyed.

<The system is refusing a reset.> The warrior was frantically brushing his hands through holograms above his station in motions that, I realised in the detached way of somebody very probably about to die, had a lot less to do with a human using a mouse than they did an andalite using sign language. <There is an override. It's encrypted.>

<Encrypted?> Ax asked. <Sabotage?> He earned a glare from the tactical officer and looked contrite. Presumably it wasn't an _aristh_ 's place to draw that conclusion, although a concussed duckling probably could.

Another warrior had joined the first at his console. <We cannot break this encryption before the scheduled landing time, sir,> he said.

I looked at Ax. Ax was watching the captain.

Perfectly normal, perhaps, for an _aristh_ awaiting orders. But while I might not know much about andalites, I was pretty sure I understood Ax's body language. Ax looked wary. Of his captain? Why? Ax had never been wary of Jake. Was there some kind of difference between a captain and a Prince that made captains inherently scarier?

Only then did I realise – Ax was constantly seeking orders from Jake. The captain hadn't given an order since the crisis began, leaving the Tactical Officer to handle things. The captain, if anything, was calm.

<Officer Harelin, a moment?> the captain asked. He turned to walk away from Ax. The Tactical Officer followed. They'd travelled barely a few paces when the captain struck.

A human probably wouldn't have seen it. But fly eyes are very good a tracking fast things. In a hundred fragmented images, I saw it. The captain swept his tailblade sideways almost as fast as a human could blink, slicing through Tactical Officer Harelin's tail. At the same time, he drew his Dracon beam, aimed and fired, then fired again, picking off the warriors one by one. A couple of them reached for their own weapons, but whether they couldn't bear to attack their captain or they simply weren't fast enough, nobody shot him. One shot after the other, each a near-perfect hit, the captain left a large, clean hole in the torso of each warrior. He whipped his tailblade to Harelin's throat and turned to face Ax who, in the second or so since the conflict had begun, had managed to take a few steps forward. He stopped when the Dracon beam was levelled at his chest.

<That is close enough, _aristh_ Aximili, > the captain said.

<Captain,> Ax said cautiously, <what is happening?>

<A thinning of the ranks. I am eliminating traitors. You, I think... do not qualify.>

<Traitors?!> Harelin growled mentally. <You killed every warrior on the bridge! The traitor would be the one who locked our controls – and very few people on this ship have the security access to do that. Very few people except you. You've doomed us all.>

<Not quite,> the captain said, calmly. <The Ascalin will fall, right into the middle of the andalite forces where it may, with luck, do some damage. And most of the brave warriors aboard will die. However, one of the escape pods is still functional, which I will board with the _aristh_ here... and with you, Harelin. We will rendezvous with the yeerk forces on the other side of the continent, and you will be a gift for Visser Four. Perhaps we can mitigate some of the damage done by that fool who rose to prominence based on having the only andalite host. >

If looks could kill, Harelin would have taken down the captain then and there. In reality, there was little he could do. I'd never really noticed how, well, helpless andalites were. I mean, they had their tails, which were deadly and fearsome weapons, but without them, they didn't have much. The captain had simply cut off Harelin's tailblade, and even though he was distracted by keeping a weapon on Ax, Harelin was helpless to stop him. His arms were too weak and delicate to wrestle with even if a tailblade hadn't been at his throat, his hooves didn't have the kind of manoeuvrability that horses did ( _could_ andalites kick?), and he didn't have any equivalent to teeth or fingernails to strike with. With access to even crude materials, humans could make clubs, spears or blades – did andalites have the strength or arm rotation to use such weapons? I could see why andalites treated their tailblades as sacred. I'd been distracted in the past by what a powerful natural weapon they were. I hadn't noticed that they were the andalites' only natural weapon.

<I am afraid,> Ax said slowly, cautiously, <that I do not understand.>

That had to be a lie. Of course he understood. Some time ago, he'd stood over a dying Alloran, heard the last warning he had given before we'd turned to flee.

_They are on the home world..._

<Guys?> Marco said. <What do we do?>

<Take him down!> Rachel growled. <Murdering scum!>

<Uh, Rachel? He just killed half a dozen andalites in less than a second. A handful of flies aren't gonna bother him.>

<I pretty obviously meant we turn into big animals and take him down.>

<If we startle him, he might shoot Ax,> I pointed out.

<Or cut the T.O.'s throat,> Tobias added.

<Wait and look for a chance to slip away and demorph,> Jake said. <This isn't a fight we can afford to lose.>

<I don't know if you guys noticed,> Rachel said, <but we're hurtling towards an alien planet at what I'm pretty sure is fatal speed.>

<Then we'd better hope that a chance to slip away and demorph comes quickly.>

The captain was talking to Ax. <You don't understand? Think, little cousin. Look around you. Look to your fight on Earth. Look to your brother. Look how much stronger people are when they come together, how much better we can be. The age of the proud, elitist andalite taking the entire universe as his due is over. It is time for us to expand, to cooperate, to be a part of something greater.>

<There is a yeerk front organisation on Earth that says that,> Ax said evenly. <'To be a part of something greater.'>

<And you think they're wrong? Why? Because they're yeerks?>

<You are not a Controller,> Ax said, thinking aloud. <There would be no way to hide a yeerk pool aboard. You're a defector? You, an andalite captain?>

<I am an agent for change!> the captain said. <I don't matter. The yeerks trying to survive by outrunning our fleet matter. Those humans you are so fond of matter. Our future, the future of the andalite species, matters.>

<The yeerks aren't trying to survive, they're trying to enslave everyone,> Ax snapped. <I fight for freedom.>

<You fight for elitism.> The captain's tone softened. <You're young. With a head too full of propoganda and too empty of experience. An eager  _aristh_ who needs his hocks trimmed... and who is ignorant of a time when that statement would not be taken as an insult, > he added when Ax bristled. <I had expected that your time with your humans would have opened your mind a little. Perhaps I was blinded by my admiration for your brother, perhaps it was wrong of me to expect the same of you.>

<What about my brother?>

<We do not have time for an in-depth moral discussion right now. We must move towards the escape pod.>

I spoke privately to the other Animorphs. <Guys, I'm on the captain's head. Should I...?>

<Not yet,> Jake said. <He might lower or move the gun if we wait.>

<Come along, Officer Harelin,> the captain said, steering the tactical officer forward with his tail, blade still at his throat. < _Aristh_ Aximili, if you would take the lead? >

<No,> Ax said.

<I would much prefer to have you as an ally,> the captain said, <but if you make me eliminate you here and now, I will. Good warriors have died on this bridge today. I will not hesitate to kill one more.>

<Then shoot,> Ax said. He crossed his arms, a gesture he'd picked up off us. It looked strange on an andalite. <I joined this war to fight for freedom, for honor, to protect my people and others from the scourge of the yeerks. I knew the risks. I would rather die here than for a moment collaborate with a traitor like you.>

<Our  _arisths_ are not so easily corrupted, it seems, > Harelin said, a trace smugly for somebody who was a twitch away from death.

<Not easily enlightened, perhaps, but that is a matter of time, of which we have precious little,> the captain said tersely. <It is his prejudice that prevents him from seeing that our morals are, essentially, the same.>

<You just killed a bridge full of warriors – your warriors, who were your responsibility – in order to serve the yeerks!> Ax exclaimed. <How could any andalite do such a thing?!>

<How could any andalite decide that his own people aren't automatically the bearers of great wisdom and perfection based solely on being andalites? Good question. I wish your brother had had time to explain to you – >

<STOP TALKING ABOUT MY BROTHER!> Ax leapt forward. From a distance, it probably would have looked like a dainty movement; from head on, it was more akin to an (admittedly very small) bison charging. The captain didn't flinch. He already had his Dracon beam aimed; all he had to do was pull the trigger as some point during the few seconds it would take Ax to reach him.

< _Aristh_ , stand down!> Harelin ordered sharply. Ax immediately halted, looking somewhat surprised at himself as he did so. Harelin continued in a gentler tone. <This isn't a fight that you can win right now.>

<My tactical officer is, as usual, sensible,> the captain said. <Let us continue this discussion in the escape pod.>

<I am not your tactical officer any more, traitor,> Harelin snapped.

<True enough. It hardly matters at this point. Aximili? I am quickly losing patience.>

<Then leave. I will not go with you. I will die an andalite  _aristh_ . >

<And the humans?>

<What?>

<Your human friends, locked in the medical bay. They can come with us or die with you on this ship.>

Ax hesitated a moment, then stepped forward.

<Yes, that's what I thought. Let's go, then.>

Ax stepped meekly ahead of the captain and out into the corridor.

<Jake,> Ax said urgently (just to us, presumably). <Tobias, Cassie, Marco, Rachel. If you can hear me, you need to escape! Captain Samalin – >

<The captain is a dirtbag,> Marco interrupted. <We know.>

<What? Where are you?>

<We decided not to just sit in our room with our hands folded like good little girls and boys,> Rachel said. <Sorry.>

<We're with you, waiting for an opening,> Jake said. <Cassie's on the captain's head. She can distract him, but not while he's a twitch away from killing you two.>

<We cannot allow him to make contact with the yeerks,> Ax said tersely. <Even if we were to survive this, the yeerks would know who you are. We would lose Leera  _and_ Earth. >

And if the yeerks had us, they'd have our families. The Star Defenders. The chee.

We were moving down the corridor at this point. The doors to either side were closed, but there was a T-junction coming up, where we could go straight or turn left.

<Okay,> Jake said. <Ax, when you get to that T-junction ahead, step sideways; get out of the captain's line of fire for just a few seconds. Cassie, get ready to demorph. Anybody else in a position to distract the captain, get ready.>

<Are you sure this will work?> Tobias asked.

<No,> Jake said.

Ax approached the junction. I put the image of my human self firmly in my mind.

Ax reached the corridor. He stepped swiftly sideways.

I began to grow.

Either Harelin was very quick on the uptake, or Ax had warned him, because the moment the captain tried to step sideways to get Ax back in his sights, Harelin twisted out from his grip. The captain didn't cut his throat; he was distracted by the rapidly growing mass of fly parts on his head. For somebody who'd never seen a fly, it probably looked a lot creepier. Another fly-- I don't know who – buzzed straight for one of the captain's stalk eyes, and he flinched back just as Harelin rushed bodily into him, slamming him against the wall. He dropped the gun.

Ax stepped back into view, tail ready.

I dropped to the floor and my vision shrank, resolved, slowed... human eyes replacing compound eyes. The decisive tail strikes between the fighting andalites blurred into a flurry of movement that I could no longer follow. Around me, other lumps were growing from the ground, exoskeletons giving way to skin and feathers, probisci dissolving into lips or beak.

I stood, shakily. Harelin was next to me. His main eyes were on the Dracon beam being kicked about by Ax and the captain, but one stalk eye was on me. He looked unnerved. I tried my best to look unaffected. “Tobias?” I asked. Tobias had the least growing to do.

<Here, demorphed. But I can't get any lift in this corridor,> he said, distressed. <You could throw – >

“I am not throwing you at a crazy alien who is waving a blade about faster than I can blink!” I hissed. I closed my eyes and focused on wolf. My jaw lengthened, my teeth grew. 

Rachel, mostly human, pulled herself into a crouch and then launched herself forward along the corridor, sliding feet-first alongside the pair of duelling andalites. The captain stepped sideways, but she wasn't after him; she reached under his legs and dragged out the Dracon beam. My eyes couldn't really follow what was happening, but I think the captain struck down at her, giving Ax a miniscule opening which he used to slice his tail across the captain's chest, forcing the captain to step back and his tail to carve through Rachel's right shoulder – a nonfatal blow. He had no choice but to keep his tail employed in defending against Ax, and she reached up with her left hand, aimed, and pulled the trigger of the Dracon beam.

The weapon bored a hole right through the captain's abdomen; blood and burned, spongy pieces of unidentified alien organs dropped out. The captain's front knees buckled, and Ax neatly beheaded him.

“Rachel,” Jake gasped, “you could've been killed!”

<That was really dangerous,> Tobias agreed. <Are you okay?>

“Sorry, I didn't realise this was a _safe_ crashing spaceship,” Rachel shot back. She glanced at the captain's corpse. “I didn't mean... I mean, I didn't have time to work out the power settings...”

<He would have killed me, had you not intervened,> Ax pointed out.

<Are you hurt?> Tobias asked again.

Rachel's right shoulder was laid open and leaking quite a lot of blood, but we'd had worse. She tried to stand, and collapsed. “I think my leg's broken.”

“Then get legs that work, the fastest you've got. We need to go,” Jake said. He looked to Harelin, who I'd sort of forgotten was there. “I believe he said something about escape pods?”

<This way,> the tactical officer said. He took off down the corridor. I was mostly wolf by then; I stayed with Rachel while she, too, morphed wolf. Then we followed the others down the corridor at a run, tracking the smell of our friends and of andalite and of acrid, alien blood.


	4. Chapter 4

We caught up with the others in some kind of hangar. There were several small craft sitting on hatches along one wall. Only one of them was lit with soft, blue lights, and our friends were piling into it.

<The other warriors on the ship?> I asked.

<No time,> Harelin said. He was poking frantically at a lit panel on the side of the craft. There was still blood dripping from his tail; I had no idea how he remained so focused. He must've lost a lot. <The destination is encrypted,> he said. <It cannot be changed. You will need to sneak past yeerk forces and get word of this treachery to Force Commander Prince Galuit-Enilon-Esgarrouth.>

<But – > Ax began.

<That is an order,  _aristh_ . > Harelin slammed his hand against a panel and the door closed. A moment later, the hatch beneath us opened.

We dropped into space.

The planet's surface was close, close enough to make out little square and circular buildings on the yellow continent.

Behind us, I could hear Harelin's voice ring out; a solemn, public message.

<To all warriors and crew of the Ascalin. This is the tactical officer. The captain is dead. We are currently on a crash course with a frontline camp of our planetside forces. Should we make contact, the impact will do significant damage to the ground forces. All escape pods are non-operational. We have only one option. I am now setting the self-destruct.> He let this sink in for a moment. <Perform the ritual of death, my brothers. Thank you for your service to this ship. Today we die in the service of the People, defending freedom.>

I started to demorph. It had been a waste of energy, morphing; a panic reaction. For Rachel, at least, it healed her injuries. Ax was covered in blood, and my wolf nose had smelled that much of it was his own. There were sharp gashes all over his body, many of them in the general vicinity of his throat. He was missing a stalk eye. He made no move to patch or heal the wounds.

Behind us, dozens of andalite voices chanted in unison.

<I am the servant of the People. I am the servant of my Prince. I am the servant of honor. My life is given for the People, for my Prince, for honor.>

If I didn't know his voice so well, I probably wouldn't have noticed that Ax was chanting along, quietly, with them.

Behind us, the Ascalin glowed bright, and disintegrated. Glowing metal and dark ash blew outwards, buffeting the escape craft. The craft corrected course and moved on.

“Ax?” I asked quietly. He didn't respond.

“Ax,” Jake said sharply. He looked up at that. “This pod is going to land in yeerk territory very soon, and we are going to be surrounded by enemy forces. We need a way out of here without getting shot or captured. Is there anything we should know about the Leerans?”

<No. I mean, I don't know. I don't know much about Leerans.>

“The condition on the ground? The yeerks' plan? The andalites' plan?”

<Uh, most of the Leeran terrestrial population is confined to a single continent, on which the main battle is taking place. Aside from their mind-reading, Leerans have the advantage of being amphibious, and can move around the coast and under the water undetected. As there are now significant numbers of Leerans on both sides, this makes the shore an unstable border, but the yeerks are attempting control of the continent, which would give them an ideal foothold for invasion – the Leerans are less agile on land, and having to move through the water hinders andalite mobility. The continent is also key to Leeran reproduction, so to lose it completely would doom the free Leeran population within a generation.> He paused. <I can see what Officer Harelin meant about it being difficult for different people to work together.>

“Great,” Rachel said, “so we land amongst the yeerks, they expect the captain to come out with a couple of hostages, and we all jump out in battle morphs and kick yeerk butt.”

“Against an army, Rachel?” Marco asked. “An army? I know you're Xena: Warrior Princess and all, but I'm not about to get killed in somebody else's fight.” 

<The yeerks are enslaving people,> Tobias said simply. <That's our fight. I think we should try to come up with something a bit more cautious, but I don't think we should walk away from this.>

Jake nodded. “We do what the andalite said. We find the Force Commander and tell them what happened.”

“Sorry?” Marco said. “After that fiasco? We are literally escaping from a ship that fell to andalite treachery right now, they've refused to deal with us and treated us as an inconvenience since we arrived, an you want to go back to them?”

“I doubt that the captain of the Ascalin was a good model for andalites in general,” I said quietly. I was watching Ax. He was staring out of the pod with all three eyes, and not moving. “If he were, the yeerks would have the planet already.” 

“We have to deal with them,” Jake said tiredly. “They're the force defending this planet, they're the force we're relying on to defend our planet, and they have spaceships and we don't.”

Marco huffed, but he didn't have a rebuttal. Rachel didn't look any happier about the decision; her fists were clenched and her jaw set.

Below us, the planet zoomed by. We were getting closer; close enough that I could make out the individual metal buildings on the ground with taxxons digging wide trenches between them and hork-bajir carrying weaponry and the occasional Leeran loping about, scanning the environment for special equipment.

“You guys realise they could shoot us right out of the air, right?” Marco asked.

<They will not,> Ax said. <They are expecting Captain Samilin.>

Rachel was inspecting the Dracon beam she'd used to shoot the captain. It looked somewhat different to ones I'd seen before. The grip was different, designed for the small, delicate hands of andalites rather than the larger, heavier hands of hork-bajir. I glanced sidelong at Ax's hands, imagined him cradling the weapon.

“I guess Dracon beams are a staple of interplanetery war, huh?” Rachel asked, turning the gun over.

<Shredders,> Tobias said idly.

“Huh?”

<Dracon beams are yeerk technology, reverse-engineered from andalite Shredders. The beam coherency is slightly altered so that... so that...> he shook his tiny bird head. <Never mind, I lost it. I think the memories are getting weaker over time. But it's a Shredder.>

“Elfangor's memories?” I asked.

<Yeah.>

“We should copy down everything you know before you forget, if they're getting weaker.”

“Um.” Marco tapped the window, out which the ground was becoming much clearer. “We should decide what we're doing.”

“Fly?” I asked. “Get out while they're still wondering where the captain is, find the andalites, report what we know?”

“Sounds good to me,” Rachel said, putting the gun down and closing her eyes.

Jake nodded and closed his own.

I hesitated. While my friends shrank around me, I put a hand on Ax's elbow to get his attention. I'd never had to try to get Ax's attention before; he was always so alert. But now he turned his remaining stalk eye on me slowly.

_Aximili_ , I said with my hands.  _You-status_ ?

_I am well_ , he said.  _I am morphing_ . He closed his eyes, and his wounds started to disappear, overlaid by the chitin exoskeleton of a fly.

I sighed and began my own morph.

We were all flies by the time the pod landed. The door opened, and in my fragmented fly vision I saw dozens of Controllers milling about; mostly hork-bajir, with a few taxxons and the occasional alien I didn't recognise.

We flew out while the door was still opening, while everybody was waiting for it to open wide enough to see the andalites within. It was almost too easy.

<Nobody will expect flies here, so we should be careful,> Tobias cautioned. <If there are human-Controllers around and they see us, they'll know something is wrong immediately.>

We kept low, moving between the Controllers' feet where they were unlikely to notice us. The... well, grass, I suppose... was spongy and yellow, more like spindly moss than a plant. Of course, trying to categorise it as either was meaningless, since it was an alien organism.

Something landed on the ground right in front of me. It had long, cricket-like back legs and body that looked like a transparent bubble, with unidentifiable pale organs floating within. On the front of its body were two long stiff tubes that it pointed at me – eyes, I realised, or something like it. It watched me for a few seconds before jumping away.

Being back in fly morph helped me center myself, somehow. The whole ship thing, the escape, hearing all those andalites chant their last words and go bravely to their deaths... it had shaken me. But fly morph meant I was on-mission, it meant business, and somehow, it was easier to push all that stuff out of the way. The others must have felt the same, because we immediately focused.

<Okay,> Rachel said. <Now what? Ax? This is your war.>

<I don't know,> he said helplessly. <I don't know what to do.>

<Well, if you don't, who does?> she demanded. <What are we going to do? Fly around and see if we can find a Dumpster with a tasty pile of rotting fruit? Come on, we need a plan. We need a way to find this Force Commander.>

<If they exist long enough for us to find them,> Marco grumbled. <Obviously, thanks to Captain Benedict Arnold back there, this whole war is going bad on us. I'm not completely up on andalite war strategy but I'm betting that ship was kind of important? I didn't think almighty andalites did things like that. I thought it was just us poor, dumb, primitive humans who'd sell out to the bad guys.>

<How about everyone getting off Ax's back?> Tobias said.

<Yeah, poor Ax,> Rachel sneered. <He throws us over in a flash for his big deal captain who, oops, turns out to be a traitor.>

<I don't think that's really fair,> I protested.

<Fair?  _Fair_ ? > Marco laughed. There was no humor in it. <If it wasn't for us totally ignoring Ax and his precious captain, he would've done his big self-sacrifice speech and be dead along with – >

<I wish I were!> Ax hissed with sudden, unexpected, and somewhat frightening venom. <I wish I were back there with them! I wish I had died alongside them, died with honor instead of fleeing as a bug like a coward.>

There was an edge of disgust in his voice. Hatred, almost. It shook me.

<Okay,> Jake said evenly, <everyone shut up. That was rough, what happened back there. It was a shock, and a lot of good guys died. Everyone is hyped up. So let's just chill.> He waited a few moments before going on in the same neutral, even tone. <Here is what we do. We head for the andalite forces, keep flying until we're near the two-hour limit. We won't get far in these bodies, but we want as much distance as we can get.>

We flew in silence.

The kept low. The vegetation on the ground gave off a sweet scent when crushed under the feet of Controllers, a scent that confused my fly senses. We'd been flying for about ten minutes when it struck me that we were actually on an alien planet. I'd gotten used to the existence of aliens, but now I was in a place where every single thing around me was alien. Or, more accurately, a place where I was alien. I shared zero kinship with the life on the ground beneath me, with the bacteria in the air – or the bacteria-like organisms in the air, because they wouldn't be bacteria. Even if they existed. Perhaps there were no single-celled organisms on this planet. I didn't see how that could be possible, but I'd seen a lot of things that I hadn't thought possible. It put the yeerks, the hork-bajir, the taxxons and the andalites into perspective. I was related to them by exactly the same amount that I was related to the thing that had landed in front of me earlier: not at all. On Earth, the wolves, the trees, the germs in the soil were all my cousins. On Leera, I didn't belong.

Perhaps what had always seemed like arrogant andalite elitism to me was simply a realistic perspective when it came to alien relations. We  _weren't_ the same. 

<Taxxon!> Marco called suddenly. <Get in the air!>

We flew upwards as fast as we could. We'd been eaten as bugs by a taxxon before. It wasn't an experience any of us wanted to repeat. But we buzzed upward past the beast before it could even extrude its long, sticky tongue.

<Leeran!> I called just as we got above head height. <To our left!>

The Leeran was close; very close. We were definitely within their mind-reading aura. But it didn't glance at us once as we flew above head height.

<Why hasn't it called a warning?> Tobias asked, sounding confused.

<Maybe they turn off their thought-reading in the camp?> Jake suggested. <For privacy reasons?>

<I don't know,> I said thoughtfully. <There was one on the underwater base that read Marco's gorilla-mind and I'm pretty sure my wolf-mind. Can they not do insects? Simple brains?> I wasn't quite sure how the whole sentient-thought-thing worked with our morphs. There was no way the tiny fly brains could hold human minds. But then, I had no idea how Leeran mind-reading worked, either.

<Let's not push our luck finding out,> Jake suggested, and we continued on our way.

After an hour and forty-five minutes, we landed behind a tumble of spiky, crystalline boulders and demorphed. According to Ax, who'd gotten a better look at the displays in the Ascalin than the rest of us, we were in the no-person's land between the yeerk and andalite forces. The battle could sweep over us at any moment.

“Okay, I'm calm now,” Rachel said, emerging from fly morph. “So now that I'm calm, same question: now what?”

“Tobias?” Jake asked.

Tobias didn't wait for clarification; he took off to do a sweep of the area.

“Ax?” Jake asked. “Thoughts?”

<I don't... I don't know.>

Jake pursed his lips and crossed his arms. “Okay, Ax. I know I'm not your 'Prince' any more, whatever the hell that means, so I'm just going to give you some friendly advice: snap out of it.”

<I don't...>

“You feel bad. I get that. You finally ended up with your people again and the first one you trusted turned out to be a traitor and now you're scared to make any decisions at all. But we don't have time for insecurity and self-pity right now, alright? The crisis of faith will have to wait. And so will the grief. Right now, you need to follow the tactical officer's order and get us to the Force Commander.”

<I'm not an expert on... on any of this.>

“You're not an expert on anything, Ax. None of us are. But we have andalites and yeerks shooting at each other here, and we're the only humans in this fight, and you know more than us. So snap out of it.” 

Tobias settled on a crystalline spire. <Bad news: we have about a thousand heavily armed hork-bajir to the right, coming in fast. They're backed up by these big, flat, oval ships flying maybe a quarter of a mile up and firing Dracon beams. Taxxons behind them. Also, the air currents here are... weird. Really weird.>

“I'm sorry,” Marco said, “did you just say a _thousand_ hork-bajir? Are you sure your eyes work properly on this planet?” 

<We are on a battlefield, Marco,> Tobias said slowly, as if trying to explain something complicated to a small child.

“Is there any good news?” Jake asked.

<Not really. To the left we have about two dozen andalite ships, also low down, and maybe a hundred tough-looking andalites on the ground. They're holding position, all dug in behind some kind of defenses. I'm no expert, but I don't think the good guys are gonna win this round.>

I waited for Ax to make a comment along the lines of a single andalite warrior being the match of a hundred yeerks. He remained silent.

“Okay,” Jake said, “let's go surrender to the andalites.”

“So Ax can ditch us for the next traitor,” Rachel said sourly. “Yeah, I am so looking forward to that.” 

Before I could say anything – before anyone could say anything – Ax's tailblade was at her throat.

“Ax!” Jake said sharply. He was ignored.

Rachel didn't look all that intimidated by Ax. She fluttered her eyelashes at him. “What's the matter, Ax? Does the truth hurt? You blew us off so you could suck up to Captain Creep back there. When we go and find more andalites, what happened? You going to tell us to go sit in the corner again and be nice while you swear yourself to the very next andalite you see? You have some kind of... service complex; you realise this, I hope. I mean you swore yourself to Jake within five minutes of meeting him and then dropped him like a hot potato for the first traitor who happened to share your fur color. Do you even care what side the person giving you orders is – ”

She shut up when Ax pushed his blade against her neck; not enough to cut, just a warning. <Captain Samalin was a vile traitor,> he said in the mental equivalent of a low hiss. <But that exception aside, my people are honorable warriors who give their lives in the service of freedom. Those warriors – good warriors – that died on the Ascalin today were n o t here to protect our People. They were here to protect the Leerans. Like they come to protect your planet, human; your friends and family and freedom. And I will  _not_ stand hear and let you besmirch their name. >

There were several long second of silence, before Rachel did something I never would have expected of her.

“You're right, Ax,” she said. She averted her eyes. “I'm sorry. I'm still mad at you, but attacking the andalite forces like that was out of line.”

Ax lowered his tail, and I let out the breath I'd been holding.

Marco cleared his throat awkwardly. “The quickly approaching yeerk army...”

“Right.” Jake rubbed his hands together. “Ax. Knowing that there may be some traitors compromising the andalite ranks, is there anyone we can be absolutely sure of?”

<The Force Commander. If he were compromised, this battle would not be taking place. The andalites would have already lost. But... surrendering will not be easy. It will mean breaching the defensive perimeter.>

“With an army at our backs,” Rachel sighed. “Super.”

“Tobias,” Jake said, “how long before the yeerk forces hit us?”

<They're razing the ground as they go, so it's slow. An hour, perhaps?>

“Travel time to the andalite forces?”

<My pace or yours?>

“Ours.”

<Hmm. Too long.>

“Then we fly. Ax, on the way, can you brief us on what we're likely to face in the defensive perimeter, please?”

<The automated defense grid will fire on anything airborne that comes too close,> Ax said as we morphed. <Anything above andalite head height will be detected. A canopy shield will prevent entry from orbit – that is why all the ships are low to the ground. The ground will be equipped with tremorshredders – much like your Earth landmines. They can be disengaged to allow warriors to enter battle, but only from the inside.>

<So our room to manoeuvre is ground-to-andalite-height,> Marco said thoughtfully as we took off, <without touching the ground. I love puzzles like this. Reminds me of the Pemalite Crystal thing.>

<Hey,> I protested, <I was the one who had to fly that nightmare, not you.>

<Yeah, but we were afraid for you. Still stressful. Hey, is anyone else flying weird?>

<Told you,> Tobias said, sounding annoyed. <Air currents are weird on this planet.>

<We can't generalise the whole planet from – you know what, never mind. The important thing is that we're going to have to fly close to the ground in these 'weird air currents' without dying.>

<In the dark,> Tobias said. I hadn't noticed before, but he was right; Leera's pale yellow sun was sinking close to the horizon.

<And is it just me, or are we getting more of those jagged crystal rock things on the ground?> Rachel asked.

It wasn't 'just her'. Pointy spires jutted upward at weird angles, and were only getting thicker.

<Anything else about the perimeter, Ax?> Jake asked.

<Not that I am aware of. My knowledge of the systems is, of course, somewhat out of date.>

<Naturally,> Jake sighed.

<Can't we just call out over the defenses with thoughtspeak?> I asked.

<It is... unlikely that anybody would possess that kind of thoughspeak range.>

<You and Tobias pretty much tie for the longest range,> I said, recalling my research results.

<Ah. Then no.>

<I thought you said the range was variable?> Marco asked. <How can someone have a longer range than someone else?>

<It is variable, but with other variables consistent, there's a definite pattern. They're the longest.>

<Huh. Where do I fit in?> Marco continued.

<Second-to-last.>

Rachel snickered mentally.

<Rachel is last,> I added.

The sky continued to darken, and the spires below grew thicker and more erratic. <This is getting more and more like the Pemalite Crystal thing,> Jake remarked.

<Didn't we all nearly die that time?> Marco asked.

<To be fair, that's pretty common,> Tobias said. <Hey, is anyone else wondering what would happen if a ship going through zero-space right now – >

<I was trying not to, Tobias.> Marco cut him off. <I was trying really, really hard not to. Thanks for that.>

<If that did happen, you'd be caught on Leera alone,> I told Tobias. <Not being in morph and all.>

<Ever notice how the one-in-a-million things always happen to us?> Marco grumbled. <Does anybody else think that's really weird?>

<Well, theoretically,> I said, <if there were several million one-in-a-million things then on average, each person should experience several.>

<Good point, Cassie, I guess when we get home I'll ask the boring kid who falls asleep in every math class whether they've been transplanted to an alien world recently.>

<Those metal rods there mark the start of the perimeter,> Ax reported as we got close.

<How are we breaching it?> Tobias asked.

<I'm thinking we go with the Pemalite Crystal plan,> Rachel said with a mental shrug. <It worked once, right?>

<Cassie's the only one with a bat morph,> Jake said.

<Then we ride on her as flies,> Rachel said.

<What do you think, Cassie?> Jake asked me in what might have been private thought-speak. <Are you up for it? We can try to think of something else.>

<No time,> I told him. In open thought-speak, I added, <Ax, can a bat make it through the perimeter in two hours?>

<How fast does a bat fly?>

<About ten miles per hour,> I answered, <although they can do short bursts of sixty miles per hour.>

<Sixty of  _our_ miles, > Marco added with mock-seriousness.

<Ten miles per hour should breach the perimeter within two hours easily,> Ax said.

<Okay,> I said.

<Right.>Jake veered right, giving the perimeter a wide berth. If was getting too dark to see the warrior's beyond it for ourselves, but I trusted Tobias' eyes. <Cassie, demorph and get a bit of rest. You're going to need all your energy for this. Ax, go with her, brief her on anything else she needs to know about the perimeter, and what to do if we encounter an andalite. We've come too far to get shot by the good guys here. Everyone else, scout the immediate part of the perimeter, and try not to get shot.>

I dipped down to land on the sharp, stony ground and began to demorph. The ground cut my unprotected feet; I ignored it. I'd be healing those scrapes soon enough. Beside me, Ax clambered cautiously onto his feet. He looked out over the perimeter, towards where we knew the camp to be.

My friends are under the impression, I think, that I'm good with emotions. I don't think that's true. I can't read the mood of a room and turn it with a joke like Marco. I can't immediately sense aggression and turn it aside like Rachel. But what I do have is years and years of experience finding injured animals, convincing them to trust me, and nursing them back to health. I've done it so much that it's almost instinct; I know when a hawk is in pain, when a wolf is grieving, when a spider is afraid. You could call that a kind of empathy, I guess.

I'm not great at social things. But I am very, very good at telling when something is hurting.

“Ax,” I said.

He looked at me. <You will know that you are through the perimeter when you reach a low wall,> he said. <It will not be difficult to breach; it is to warn the warriors inside of the perimeter location, not for defensive value. Between these spires there might be poles that are electrified. Do not touch them. When you see an andalite, tell us, and I will speak with him. But do not move into sight until he has acknowledged us, or you may be shot.>

I nodded. “Now that that's out of the way, can we talk about what's up with you?”

<What is 'up' with me?> He tilted his head. <We are in a war zone, my commanding officer was a traitor and his second, along with a hundred or so andalite warriors, is dead. That is what is 'up' with me.> He looked back over the perimeter. <Contact will be difficult.>

“Yeah, that's not what I meant.” I crossed my arms. I wasn't buying Ax's 'I'm back with my own people so I don't have to get along with you guys any more' routine. And I didn't think his behaviour was about a load of dead warriors weighing on his conscience. Sure, I could accept that he didn't want Jake as his Prince any more, but he'd become brash and shockingly hostile in ways that just didn't make sense. I was missing something. “Have we offended you in some way?”

<No. Everything is fine.>

“You put your tail to my best friend's throat, Ax. That is _not_ fine.” 

<Yes. I should apologise to Rachel for – >

“This isn't about her. It's about you. Something's wrong and I don't know how to help you because I don't know what it is. We're friends, aren't we?”

He hesitated. <You wouldn't understand.>

“Why? Because I'm human?”

<Yes.>

I narrowed my eyes. “Look, Ax, I know you, with your mighty andalite brain, think humans are stupid, but – ”

<Not stupid. But different. I sometimes forget how different.>

“Then explain it to me. Help me to understand, _ethil_ Aximili.”

Ax watched me with one stalk eye while his main eyes gazed over the defensive perimeter. <The yeerks are coming in from space, deploying on lands and pressing a land battle. This strategy risks their infrastructure under development, as well as noncombatants on the ground, against a combined andalite-Leeran force. It would make more sense to draw the andalite forces out in orbit, where they can overwhelm us, and then use their remaining forces to engage the Leerans unobstructed, with minimal interference to their infrastructure. Tactical Officer Harelin-Frodlin-Sirinial said that the reason the yeerks wanted the battle down here is that we are weaker together. These forces would suggest that he was correct, I suppose.>

I blinked at him. “That's what this is about? You think working with us makes you weak? Ax, the victories we've had over the yeerks with practically no information and no resources – ”

<I know. That is not it.> He spoke in the same even tone he always used to report ridiculous levels of danger on the batlefield. <Officer Harelin's attitude is common among the older generation. We have slowed the yeerk invasion together; of that, I agree. But Captain Samilin-Corrath-Gahar...> He turned his stalk eye away from me, and fell silent.

“Was a traitor, we know. I get that that bothers you – ”

<No. It does not bother me that he was a traitor. Well... it does, but we knew that they had infiltrated the homeworld already. I was hoping that it was only physically and not ideologically. And that they are in our military is a serious problem. But...> he stopped speaking, and fluttered his hands in a sequence of syllables too fast for me to follow.

“Ax, I... I don't know most of those signs.”

<He thought I was his ally,> he said quietly.

“Oh.” For a few seconds, I didn't have an answer to that. Eventually, I said, “It would make sense for him to try to turn you. You've been separated from the army a while, you have unique knowledge on the situation on Earth; he probably thought – ”

<No. He did not try to turn me. You heard him. He assumed that we were already allies. When I defied him, he... he acted like I was confused. Like of course we were on the same side, that I just didn't understand yet and he didn't have time to explain. He faced Harelin like an enemy; he faced me like... well, like a protege. Nobody has spoken to me that way since...> he drifted off, but I could guess what he was going to say. Nobody had spoken to him like that since his brother. <And he used you to convince me to leave, and seemed to think that that proved his point.>

I nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “We humans have a phrase,” I said, “'Shifting the Goalposts'. It's a type of... of cheat sometimes used in arguments. Let's say I wanted to do something, so we had an argument: 'is it right to do X?' Then part of the way through, I realise I'm losing, so I start shifting my arguments, using different phrases, until before you know it, we're arguing 'is it efficient to do X?' It turns out it is efficient, so I win, and everybody leaves thinking 'oh yes, it is right to do X'. This isn't always done deliberately – if people want something to be right badly enough, they can and do fool themselves. But just because the captain thought that having non-andalite friends makes you the same, doesn't mean it's true.”

<Samalin and Harelin are both a lot more experienced at this than I am,> he said. <I have known a lot of good warriors who work to protect the People, who are like Harelin. This is... difficult to explain in a way that would make sense to a human.>

“Just because the majority believe something doesn't mean it's true. Just because authority believes something doesn't mean it's true. I mean, yeah, people with more experience are probably more reliable, but the same prejudice that stopped Harelin from trusting other people is probably what made Samalin confuse your circumstances with his own. Samalin wasn't bad because his friends were aliens. He was bad because they were slavers, and he killed his own allies to help them. They don't know humans. You know humans. You have information that they don't.”

Tobias fluttered down onto a nearby rock. <The camp's straight ahead, the yeerks are closing in, and we have no further complications,> he said. <That we can see.>

<Are you ready, Cassie?> Jake asked.

I nodded.

<Right. After Cassie goes bat, everyone go fly and hang on. Remember, our goal is to make contact with the andalite forces, not to 'kick yeerk butt'. If the yeerks catch up, we keep running. We don't engage on our own. Battlefields are too chaotic and we're as likely to be seen as a threat by the andalites as by the yeerks. Got it?>

<Yes,  _Dad_ ,> Rachel grumbled. 

<Hey, that's fine by me,> Marco said. <Don't get killed. Excellent plan.>

I closed my eyes and started to morph. Beside me, Tobias and Ax shrank, while around us my other friends grew. This was our team; six scared little kids. Six scared little kids trying to save the world.

The world we were now cut off from. And soon, we would be five.

<We're your friends, Ax,> I said privately, as soon as I could thought-speak. <You might be confused, but I'm not. When you do return, I trust that you'll remember our alliance for what it is. I know you believe in our friendship.>

His answer was so quiet that I wasn't sure if he even meant to think it aloud.

<So did Seerow.>


	5. Chapter 5

Contrary to popular belief, bats aren't blind. Their eyesight isn't great, but it was far from the worst I'd had. I could see my friends shrinking into tasty little – um, becoming flies.

Rule one of animal shapeshifting: friends don't eat friends.

The others settled onto my back, gripping to my bristly fur and taking shelter behind the folds of my neck and ears. I took off, keeping as low to the ground as I could without lacerating myself on sharp rocks (I could still remember the feeling of shards of glass biting my tiny body from the last time I'd been a bat), echolocating the larger points that threatened to obstruct my path. Bats weren't fast, at least not compared to birds of prey, but they were agile. The texture of the echoes from the rocks was strange, resonant; they stood out as bright, shifting spikes in my hearing, the auditory version of iridescence. I became aware of a constant hum, low at first, but building. The rocks singing my own echoes back to me over a long period of time, perhaps?

<Something's humming,> I told the others as I shot sideways to avoid a spike. <It sounds a bit like music.>

<That is probably the sensors,> Ax said. <Some kinds emit ultrasonically... is the sound from above or below?>

<I'm... not sure. Below, I think.>

<Ah. Then do not touch the rocks. Any of the rocks.>

<Why?>

<The hum could be any number of things, but if it is in ground like this, it is probably a  _theurin_ trigger net. Pressure could cause the rocks to explode. >

<Right. Good to know.> That should be terrifying, but at my speed, touching the rocks would ground and kill me anyway. I was just glad that my echolocation didn't count as 'pressure'.

It was fairly easy going.

Until something behind me exploded.

The first explosion was far off; not a problem. But the next one was closer. I flew faster, dodging left, right, up, careful not to get higher than andalite height, dip back down, left again... a laser hit a spire next to me and it exploded, sending me flying; I righted myself just in tome to avoid another...

<Cassie?!> Rachel asked urgently. <What's happening? Did you hit one?>

<No, it's – > a sixth sense told me to bank right, and the hair on my head was singed.

<Is that Dracon fire?> Tobias asked.

<They're not shooting at me, they're shooting at the rocks. But there's no way to get out of the way.>

<You have to outrun them,> Jake said.

<Thanks,> I snapped. <I would never have thought of that. I'll just outrun the advancing army through the uneven minefield.> At least they couldn't bring their flying ships into the fight without the sensors picking them up. <See, if it was me,> I said conversationally as I swept around a rock without touching it and tried to ignore the building hum in my head, <I would've set up the sensors so that they take out anything at all, not just fliers.>

<There would not be enough automated weaponry to tackle an army,> Ax said. <Such a system would send slightly thinned racks of both airborne and terrestrial troops. The anti-flight sensors are there to ensure that the battle takes place on andalite terms – on foot.>

The hum ceased. Was it really gone, or had the battle rendered me senseless? <Uh, guys? The hum's stopped, I think.>

<The ground grid is off,> Ax said. <Take shelter! That means – >

He didn't have to tell me what it meant. I heard them; first their thundering hoofbeats against soft ground and hard stone, and then their physical forms in the echoes of my own voice. Andalites. Armed, dangerous, ready-for-battle andalites.

<Don't get involved,> Jake reminded us. <Our mission is to make contact with Command.>

I took shelter between some tall, sharp rocks to wait for the battle to sweep over us. The yeerk forces were no longer targeting rocks now that the grid that made them explode on impact had been turned off. I didn't know how resistant they were to laser fire without it, but hopefully I wouldn't have to find out.

Something bright moved past me, as if it had been lobbed gently through the air – a little glowing ball, like a round glowstick, about the size of a tennis ball. It shone a weak blue, and landed among the yeerk forces, illuminating them; hork-bajir, heads hunkered low to avoid the anti-air sensors. Somewhere behind me was a series of short, silent flashes of blue, and the illuminated hork-bajir started to drop, holes carved through their bodies.

The Dracon beams were loud, but the Shredders were nearly silent. I could see the andalites making use of the darkness, of weak hork-bajir eyesight, keeping to the shadows and lobbing their little glowing globes for illumination. They were badly outnumbered, but watching the battle, I could feel a little shred of hope.

<We should demorph and remorph,> Tobias said. <I do not want to get trapped as a fly.>

<Ax?> Jake asked. <Time?>

<We have been in morph for one hour and fifteen of your minutes.>

<Cassie, are we sheltered?>

<... As sheltered as we can be, on a battlefield.>

<Okay. Do it.>

I started to demorph. I grew, my wings shrivelled up and vanished, my eyesight improved a little. Around me, flies grew into my friends. I tried not to move and let the sharp rocks cut me. I hoped that there weren't any common chemicals on the planet that would kill a human. Oh man, I hadn't even thought of that! What if something in the soft yellow fungus was actually a potent neurotoxin for humans?! This was an alien planet, we hadn't evolved to adapt to anything like it; the chemicals here could do anything!

But we'd been fine so far. And... and morphing should take care of any problems, right? How did morphing deal with poisons? We'd morphed our way out of being poisoned before, but that was with bug spray, and birds and mammals were immune to bug spray. If something here was toxic to everything made of certain Earth proteins...

Were the chances of that high? Low? I didn't know. I had no precedent. I didn't know how delicate biology was when confronted with an entirely different kind of biology, I didn't...

Wait, no, yes I did. Ax had been eating Earth grass, breathing Earth air, just fine. Hork-bajir had been eating Earth bark. Taxxons had eaten Earth... everything; yeerks had been infesting Earth life. Those species were doing fine on Leera. And we knew that hammerhead sharks could do fine on Leera. So we... we could probably do fine on Leera. I relaxed a little.

Of course, we could still encounter something highly toxic at any moment. But our breath and our wounds on the rocks weren't killing us.

Soon, four humans, a bird, and an andalite were squished in the crevice between a couple of pointy crystalline boulders. I wasn't sure Ax would fit, but somehow, he managed.

The andalites had tactics, but it wasn't hard to see why the yeerks had chosen their own method of simply overrunning the opposition without need for fancy manoeuvres – they had the numbers to do it. The andalites fought bravely, but they couldn't stem the onslaught of hork-bajir. Right in front of us, an andalite's front legs were sliced off; he collapsed against the crystalline rock, little splinters breaking off and embedding in his skin. The hork-bajir didn't bother to finish him off, but kept marching; a mistake, as the andalite still had a Shredder, and shot the hork-bajir in the back as he marched past.

And then the battle was on the other side of out little shelter. I jumped over the side to kneel by the andalite, heedless of the sharp stone.

“Cassie!” Jake hissed. “I said stay out of it!”

<Yeah, that's what you  _said_ ,> Tobias agreed. <So what are we actually going to do?>

“These guys are getting roasted,” Rachel added. “We can't sit by and _watch_.”

“... Fine. Ax has some training; he's in charge for the duration of the battle.”

I took the hands of the andalite in mine. He was losing a lot of blood.

“Hey,” I said gently. “Can you morph? You have to morph something.”

He blinked blearily up at me. Did he understand English? Didn't they have translator chips or something? Maybe he was too woozy to focus. I raised my hands instead.  _Morph_ , I insisted with my stupid, clumsy human hands. 

Behind me, Ax had finished giving directions, and the other Animorphs were all morphing. Ax stood beside me. The dying andalite fluttered his hands weakly.

<He says that he cannot focus,> Ax said. <It may have been many years since his morphing exams, he might not remember the details of – >

I picked up the andalite's hand and lay it on my cheek.  _Morph me_ , I said.  _Look at me, morph me_ .

His eyes met mine and I felt the peaceful lethargy of being acquired overtake me. Then, he started to change, His fur began to disappear, only to be replaced with dark, smooth human skin. He ran his fingers over my face – I was hard to see in the near-dark, I realised – and his face began to change to match mine. I took his other hand and put it against my spine, letting him feel the shape of it; his own spine realigned, and the wound where his front legs used to be closed up. His shoulders shifted, his arms thickened, and I could see him becoming more alert as my blood filled his veins.

He was halfway done before I realised that he would be naked.

“Ax,” I said quickly, stepping between the two, “don't look at him!”

<Why not – >

“Because he doesn't have _any clothes_ ,” I hissed, feeling my face getting hot. I don't know why that made it so much worse; I mean, he was already in and feeling my... my body... but I didn't want him, or Ax, or anyone else also seeing it. 

It occurred to me that we must seem incredibly ridiculous to andalites.

<You are already wearing very tight artificial skin,> Ax grumbled, but he averted all his eyes nonetheless.

<What are you?> the andalite warrior asked, peering at me.

“I'm a human. My name's Cassie.”

He glanced at Ax, squinting.

<I am  _aristh_ Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill, > Ax said, carefully not looking at him.

<Elfangor's little brother?> the warrior asked, surprised.

<Yes,> Ax said with a little mental sigh, <Elfangor's little brother. I am travelling with several of these humans and we have urgent information for Command.>

The warrior started turning back into himself, fur crawling over his... my... skin. I relaxed a little. Something hit the rocks behind us, and little sharp chips exploded from them. We all flinched.

<I am warrior Teilat-Offeran-Iskillion,> the warrior said as stalk eyes erupted from the top of his head. His dark, dense hair was replaced by even shorter, pale andalite fur; his broad nose flattened and widened and lifted until they were just two long slits down his whole face, stretching to take up the room left by his dissolving mouth.

It was the creepiest thing I'd ever seen. And there were a lot of contenders for that spot.

<How can we help?> Ax asked, reviewing the battle.

<The current mission is to delay the approaching yeerk forces long enough for the central forces to make a retreat.

<We're running away?!>

<We are retreating from an unwinnable battle,> Teilat snapped. He clambered to his four feet. <Find a weapon and help. You, human Cassie. Do you have any natural weapons?>

I grinned, already bringing the wolf to the forefront of my mind. “I'm sure I'll think of something.”

I immediately lost track of Teilat in the chaos. He was gone before I had fur, and Ax wasn't far behind. I found Jake trying to harrow a small group of the advancing hork-bajir forces from behind, who turned on him; I dashed forward to assist, sinking my teeth into a hork-bajir throat.

<Did Ax update you on the plan?> I asked.

<Try to slow 'em down. Yeah,> he replied, swiping a huge tiger paw along another hork-bajir's torso.

A blade sliced down towards my head; I dodged it automatically and threw myself up towards the owner's neck. She flinched back, lifted her head too high, and I didn't even make contact with my teeth before a laser went through her eye.

<I'd forgotten about the anti-air sensors,> I said sheepishly.

<Good thing we're this short, then,> Jake responded.

I heard Ax's voice. <Most of the andalites are off-field,> he announced. <We need to keep the focus in the back lines for a little while more.>

We moved forward, tiger and wolf, pressing toward another group of hork-bajir. One turned and noticed us before we reached them; he raised a Dracon beam. Jake and I immediately ran in opposite directions, forcing him to choose a target. He levelled at the larger, brighter tiger. Jake's stripes might let him melt almost invisibly into a forest, but on this planet, they were a beacon.

I dashed forward, but there was no way to close the gap in time. I watched the hork-bajir level his weapon. Then a blade, a hork-bajir blade, sliced its way right across his throat; its owner threw him bodily into another hork-bajir and then ducked the swipe of a neighbor. I was close enough to strike, and did so, taking the arm off the one attacking our unlikely ally. She shot me a hork-bajir grin before stabbing her elbow blade into a nearby chest. <Fancy seeing you here,> she said.

<Tobias?>

<Of course. You think I'm going to try flying under this thing? I'm not crazy.> He blocked another hork-bajir's swipe, and Jake leapt forward to take his opponent's head off.

Somewhere ahead of us, bright blue light shone, and rose into the sky. They became smaller and smaller and, finally, vanished.

<They're done!> Ax called from somethere. <Go to ground! Disappear!>

We'd finished off the hork-bajir immediately engaged with us. From the darkness ahead, we heard huffing; hork-bajir cheering and laughter. The relieved laughter of those who have survived a battle. Not only survived, but made a difference. The sound was different, but we Animorphs had done the same thing countless times.

We found stones to hide amongst on the uneven ground.

<Head count?> Ax asked shakily.

<Here,> Jake said. <I have Cassie and Tobias here, too.>

<I'm alive,> Rachel added.

<Me too,> Marco said. <Oh, man. That was insane.>

<Well done, Ax,> Jake said.

<Thank you, Jake,> he answered stiffly. <But it would seem that we have failed in our mission to make contact with Command.>

I stared up at the sky, full of stars. I could barely make out the ground around me, but the stars were clear. I guess if I knew more astronomy I could see how different the view was than from my own planet, and feel lonely. But I'd never learned any astronomy.

The andalite lights had vanished up there. The andalite forces had been brave, and held out as long as they could, but in a short few hours, they'd lost this part of the battlefront. I couldn't help but think that it was probably the same over the whole continent. I couldn't help but think that just like that, in less than a day, Leera had been lost to the yeerks. That they'd establish themselves on the continent and hunt the rest of the Leerans down in the water.

I probably would've liked the Leerans, I thought. A species with no secrets would have to be gentle and diplomatic, surely. And now they would be the weapons of the Yeerk Empire.

<I hate to sound like a broken record,> Rachel said, <but... now what?>

<We should probably get off this battlefield, maybe,> Tobias said.

<That's probably step one,> Jake agreed. <Move back and meet up away from yeerk forces.>

We moved back across the battlefield until we could no longer hear hork-bajir. They were moving away from us at the same time, swarming to the now-deserted andalite camp, so it was a short journey. The whole time I kept wondering what would happen if the ground grid was turned back on. I knew there were no andalites left to turn it on, I knew the battle was over, but still...

Eventually, we found each other and demorphed, five humans shivering in the dark under the watch of a hawk and an andalite. None of us could see very much at all.

“That was fast,” I said dully. “That was a lot faster than I would've expected.”

<The yeerks are attempting to win the planet as quickly as possible,> Ax said. <If the Leerans have time to prepare properly retreat, it could take many of your years to hunt them all down in the vast ocean. They will set up on the continent as quickly as possible and then immediately launch a sea campaign.>

<This is what they wanted the sharks for?> Tobias asked. <To dominate the seas as quickly as possible?>

<That would be my guess,> Ax agreed.

We were silent for a little while. I rested my head, wearily, on Jake's shoulder. His body temperature was higher than mine, and I could feel his heat against my arm. He put one arm around my shoulders.

“You cold, Rachel?” Marco asked with a grin, reaching for her. She slapped his hand away with a sour look.

“Okay,” I said, more to myself than to the others. “We're trapped on an alien planet overrun by yeerk forces and with no way home. What are our options?” 

<We do some damage while we're here,> Tobias suggested. <They're trying to set up infrastructure?We sabotage it.>

“Made them deal with 'andalite bandits' wherever they go,” Rachel said with a hollow sort of laugh. “I like it.” 

“Um,” Marco said. “The mind-reading aliens? I mean, they can't read fly minds, but they definitely can read gorilla minds, and we're not going to get much done as flies.” 

“I wonder why?” I asked. “Is it a brain complexity thing? Is it a chemical thing? Insects have slightly different nerve cells than us, maybe...”

“No mind reading experiments with the enemy,” Jake ordered jokingly. I rolled my eyes. 

“We really need a way home,” I sighed.

“No kidding,” Marco said. “Our families must be freaking out. I am so grounded.”

“We are all so grounded,” Rachel said.

“It's not that,” I said. “We could starve. I mean, nothing's killed us so far, and Ax and the hork-bajir haven't had any problem with Earth vegetation, but...” I pulled at the mossy matter on the ground. “There are enough things on Earth that can poison humans... and hawks. Let alone this place. And I have no idea if Ax can eat this moss stuff.”

Nobody had anything to say to that. Thinking about biology sometimes calms me down, but it certainly wasn't helping anybody else's mood.

“One continent,” Rachel muttered. “What kind of crazy planet has one continent? If there were more land to set up the defending forces on...”

<The Leerans spend very little time on land,> Ax answered absently. <They will try to defend from their underwater cities. So far as I know, they use the continent primarily for breeding; their eggs need the... vegetation that...> he broke off. I could hear him shuffling his hooves against the stony ground.

<Ax?> Tobias asked.

<Are the oceans salt water?> Ax asked.

“Um,” Marco said, “how on Earth would we know that?”

“Sharks,” I said quietly. “Hammerhead sharks need saltwater to live. So the oceans would have to be saltwater.”

<Then we need to get to the ocean,> he said urgently, excitedly.

“O-kay,” Rachel said slowly. “Are you going to tell us why?”

<No. I cannot. I am sorry. But if I am right, then the Force Commander and the andalite forces will be in the underwater cities. And we must reach them.>

“Yeah,” Marco said, “I'm not sure I want to follow your directions without you telling us what's going on, Ax.”

<Marco, we are fighting yeerks and Leerans. The less vulnerable our information, the better.>

“He's right,” I said instantly. “I trust him.”

<So do I,> Tobias said firmly.

Rachel snorted. “Fine. But if you sell us out again...”

<My goals are the same as yours,> he assured her.

“Marco?” Jake asked.

“Yeah. Okay. It's not like we have other options.”

“Alright,” Jake said. “Let's get wings and go.”

<There is one more thing,> Ax said. <It is of vital importance that the yeerks do not learn of this. If there is any chance that the Leeran-Controllers will read my mind, you must kill me. You must stop that from happening.>

“I don't think I could – ”

<You must.>

“Why?”

<Because I believe that I know what the andalite forces are planning. And if... if I am right... then this promises to be the greatest andalite victory in the war to date. And that information cannot fall into yeerk hands. No matter what.>


	6. Chapter 6

We walked on wolf and hork-bajir feet until we were sure we were out of range of the anti-air sensors. A stone tossed into the air had confirmed that the yeerks hadn't disabled them. Once we passed the telltale posts and tossed another stone to confirm we were safe, we morphed owls and used Ax's memory of the continental maps to fly toward the coast.

<So, uh, do we know where the underwater cities are?> Marco asked.

<We will have to find that out when we make it to shore.>

<Wonderful. I love a properly thought out plan.>

We flew for hours, only stopping to demorph and remorph and rest just enough to regain the strength to keep flying. Owls didn't have the long-distance capabilities of, say, geese; they were hunters. The ground beneath us changed, spiny stones giving way to flat ground with longer, threadier vegetation, like straw clinging to the soil, and then finally to sand. Over all of it were burned-out buildings and ships, dead bodies, criss-crossing burn scars and explosions across the land. Controllers were moving about in some of the areas, moving wreckage and assembling defensive walls. They were monitoring the sky, but six tiny, silent birds drifted unnoticed in the darkness.

I thought about what Ax said. 'If there is any chance that the Leeran-Controllers will read my mind, you must kill me.' None of us could do that. We all knew that none of us could do that.

Thing was, we knew things that we couldn't allow the yeerks to learn, too.

Our own identities probably didn't matter here; not without a way home. Even things like the Star Defenders probably wouldn't be a big enough deal for the Leeran invaders to bother passing onto the Earth forces. But there were other things. Things like the chee, with their amazing technology and incapability of fighting back. Secrets that turned out very presence on Leera into a huge liability to the entire war effort.

Secrets that could not be allowed to fall into yeerk hands.

And if it came right down to it, if the only way I could stop those secrets from being revealed was to destroy the mind they were in... I knew that I would not be able to do it. My own? Yes. But Rachel's, Jake's, Tobias', Marco's, Ax's? No. Not a chance.

I hated being so weak.

I hated living in a universe where the inability to kill my friends counted as weakness.

The sun was rising over the ocean by the time we made it to the shore. The water was wonderfully, beautifully clear, and reflected the reddish-yellow light in sheets of shining gold. We landed on the shore and demorphed. I curled my toes in the incredibly fine, white sand. Small, brightly coloured jewels of all colors shone here and there along the beach. I picked up what looked like a ruby. I didn't know enough about stones to tell if it actually was a ruby. I didn't even know how rubies were formed.

“Leera's a beautiful planet,” I said. “Is your homeworld anything like this, Ax?”

<No. The homeworld is more like your Earth, with grass cover and clouds. More land mass, of course, and less oceans. This place is gritty, barren and dimly lit.> He eyed the ground distastefully.

<Seems bright enough to me,> Tobias said.

Rachel kicked her feet through the water. “So we're just going to morph and swim around and see what happens?”

“We've worked with stupider plans,” Marco shrugged. 

I was already wading into the water. The dangers around us and the impossibility of our situation didn't change the fact that we were on an  _alien planet_ . I wanted to see, to feel what their ocean was like. I was barely ankle-deep when some kind of dark blue puffy worm erupted from the sand near my foot and swam away. Something invisible underwater pushed itself up through the surface, a transparent bubble with the sunlight shining through it, appeared to look around, then dropped back down. It was amazing.

“This place is creepy,” Marco grimaced, wading in next to me. “I can't wait to be absolutely covered in teeth.” He closed his eyes to focus.

I also started to morph, my bones melting to cartilage and my teeth multiplying within my flattening mouth.

Soon, we were swimming within the clear water. It was slightly less clear to the shark's sight, but we could still see perfectly well. I would've thought camouflage nearly impossible in the Leeran ocean, but my shark's bioelectrical sensors pointed out several small, living, near-invisible things in the water around us. Was this where the Leerans' mind-reading abilities had come from? A sophisticated method to penetrate various forms of nervous camouflage that the sheer alienness of my shark's senses could penetrate with ease? Unlikely – I couldn't see the connection between just sensing prey and pulling complex thoughts out of a sentient mind. It would have to be born from the ways they communicated with each other. Or, perhaps, both.

Not everything was invisible. Below me swam great, pale sheets, like giant white manta rays or the sails of sinking ships, their edges curling in the current. Little black screw-shaped beings that rotated their way through the water. A school of long, electric blue eels brushed past us, paying us absolutely no attention.

<Look at this place!> I enthused as we swam. <It's amazing! My mom has a friend who studies coral reefs – she'd cut off her own arm to spend an hour here!> In the back of my own mind, questions were running the whole time –  _how does it work? Do the sail-things have control over their movement? What do the screw-fish eat? How do these beings see? What do they think about?_

<Hey,> Jake said, <aren't those Leerans? Down and to the left.>

I looked, twisting my big hammerhead face. Indeed, they looked like Leerans. The light on Leera was different and played off their skin differently; their yellow skin seemed almost flourescent, with darker stripes of dull yellow crisscrossing their bodies in what looked like random patterns. Their bulbous green eyes seemed to be illuminated from within. They were wearing harnesses that held stacks of long, fine spears against their backs, and they rode on little scooter things that jetted through the water.

One of the Leerans turned to look at us, twisting their body with the aid of their four tentacles. They started swimming over. The rest followed.

<Be careful,> I warned. <They won't know what we are. They might see us as a threat.>

We remained where we were as the Leerans swam over.

Cautiously, Jake said, <Hello. I'm – >

A very fine spear shot through his chest.

<Aargh!>

<We're your allies!> Marco called angrily as a spear sailed toward him. They were fast, too fast for me to track. The Leerans were firing them from some kind of device in their carrying harnesses.

The response was a thought that erupted in my mind. It wasn't quite like andalite thoughtspeak – it wasn't merely a message bypassing my ears. It was as if the thought had occurred to me, except with the clear tone and perspective of another.

<Human boy,> the Leeran said. <Five Earth beings and an andalite  _aristh_ . Not our allies. >

<Controllers!> Rachel said. She darted forward. A thin spear pierced her right side. She trailed blood, but didn't slow down.

A hammerhead shark can take bite wounds that expose its liver, keep swimming, and heal up just fine.

I could see why the yeerks had wanted them.

We didn't let Rachel charge alone. There were nine Leerans and six of us, six tooth-covered, hungry hunting machines. But they knew our tactics as quickly as we did, and they were extremely coordinated. They swam around us, firing their spears when they had a chance. I lost sight in my right eye before I realised I'd been shot.

<Your eyes!> I warned the others. <Look out for your eyes!>

I didn't bother making the warning private. The Leerans could read my mind. What would be the point?

I sank my teeth into a tentacle, tore it from its owner. The Leeran, or the yeerk, or maybe both, screamed in pain in my mind. I was fighting, I had the weapons, I had the big ripping jaws and the sandpaper skin, but I was blind on one side. Only my electrical sensing allowed me to flinch away from an approaching Leeran in time to avoid a spear to the gills.

<Their heads!> Ax called suddenly. <There is a lobe on the back of their heads, where their... where their necks would be! Bite it off!>

_Yes, bite and kill the aggressor_ , the shark in me said.  _Kill the prey._

_Yes, don't let them leave alive; they know too much_ , the human within me said. 

I bit my injured Leeran, right where Ax had told us to. A piece of rubbery flesh with spongy material (brains? ew) floated away from my mouth. Pale green fluid stained the clear water around us.

The Leeran was still.

Then, it moved.

It spun, and fired one of its spears at the Leeran who had tried to shoot me in the gills. The spear went right through the back of the Leeran's head, and stunned it long enough for another shark – I don't know who – to swoop in and bite off the back of its head.

<The yeerks inhabit the back lobe,> Ax explained as he darted for another Leeran. <One of them gained control long enough to tell me. Take that part off, and they're free.>

And I'd been so ready to kill them.

The tide of the battle turned quickly, with Leerans holding Leerans for long enough for Animorphs to swoop in and deliver the freeing blow. Soon, nine injured Leerans floated before us, leaking pale greenish blood from the wounds in their heads.

<Are... are you guys going to be okay?> Jake asked doubtfully.

The response was much... fuzzier than the Controllers' thoughtspeak had been, like a CD that keeps skipping, or a tape that's been tapes over too many times. But I understood it. The damage was severe, but it would heal over time. The Leerans could share their brainpower, help to compensate for each others' damage a little, until then. 

The Leerans were grateful for our help. The Leerans knew of caves nearby where they could rest and be safe. The Leerans wanted us to come to the caves and heal our own injuries.

We followed them, moving much more jerkily with parts of their brains missing, down into the water to the ocean floor. What had looked like a smooth sand surface from higher up turned out to be full of ledges and holes, some trick of the light hiding their shadows. The Leerans led us into one such cave. It was cramped, for a shark, but we could swim through. The walls were lit with faint orange-yellow orbs, just bright enough to make out the walls of the cave. I still only had sight in one eye, and it wasn't easy to avoid the wall on my blind side. There wasn't enough room for a hammerhead shark to turn around.

Too late, it occurred to me that this could still be a trap.

The tunnel opened up into a wide cavern, and I could... yes, I could see the surface of the water, with light above it. There was air in the cave.

The Leerans hopped up onto a stone ledge that sat about a foot below the water's surface. We demorphed, and pulled ourselves onto the ledge. The above-water portion of the cavern wasn't large, but the air was breathable. It was cold, probably because we were so wet. Sitting on the ledge, the water came to my hips. There would be no saving the spare paper in my glove sleeve. I looked at the Leerans.

“Thank you,” I said.

The Leerans were grateful for our help. The Leerans were happy to be free.

“Look,” Marco said, “we need to reach the andalite Force Commander. Or... or the nearest Leeran city, basically. Do you know where it is?”

The Leerans thought that getting to the city would be difficult. The city was still under Leeran control, so far as they knew, but there were Controller patrols in the way. The Leerans were concerned that our secrets would be discovered. The Leerans were concerned that the yeerks would learn what Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill had figured out.

<It is true, then?> Ax asked.

The Leerans knew only what the yeerks knew and what Aximili knew. The Leerans did not know of the strategies of the Leeran or andalite forces.

The Leeran I had injured looked at Marco and waved their remaining tentacles. Yes! The Leerans thought that plan would work.

Jake frowned. “So what's the plan, exactly?”

The Leerans wanted us to acquire their DNA. With their telepathic powers to protect us and their form to help us pass beneath notice, we may be able sneak past the yeerk forces. The Leerans wanted us to leave them in the caves to rest and take their water jets to... and suddenly, we knew where the nearest city was.

I reached out a hand, and a Leeran tentacle wrapped around it. I closed my eyes, envisioned the Leeran, envisioned its form becoming part of me. I felt the tentacle in my hand relax.

The Leerans dropped off the ledge and darted away, moving farther into the cave system.

“Okay!” Marco clapped his hands together, the sound loud in the confined cave. “Who wants to morph psychic frogs?” 

“Why not?” Rachel muttered. “Why not make this day even weirder?” 

I wanted to rest a little, to get my energy back, but there was a war going on and time might matter. I focused on the Leeran I'd just acquired.

Some kind of shiny goo oozed out of my still-human skin, like a thick coating of vaseline. Despite the danger of poisons, I couldn't resist dabbing a little on my tongue to see what it tasted like. It tasted of nothing.

My skin roughened underneath it, became thin and pebbly. I felt my shoulders collapse, felt the bones in my body change into... well. I don't know what was happening inside me, but Leerans, it turns out, don't have spines. They have some kind of system of cartilaginous plates in the center of their bodies. I felt my organs shift inside it and change, some melting away, some making room for new ones to grow. My head sunk down into my... where my shoulders had been. My arms were gone completely. My jaw moved back and my head oriented itself more upward; a rubbery ring appeared around my body just behind my ears, and four long, dextrous tentacles pushed their way out of it. My legs were also changing into long, delicate, froglike appendages. I kicked them experimentally. They didn't seem so froglike from inside. More like... more like a shark's tail, but I had two. And they had the flexibility to also be used as legs. But their main purpose was to push me through the water.

My mouth stretched wide, my teeth disappeared. My eyes expanded, changed...

One of my evolution books says that on Earth, the eye evolved separately at least 40 times, and maybe as many as 65 times. It's such a simple system to evolve, and takes such advantage of a resource that's all over the place (specifically, light), that it just keeps arising again and again. Some of these different eyes are quite different from each other, using and processing light in different ways, but nowhere, nowhere on Earth did anything exist like the Leeran eye.

I didn't see color. Or shapes. I saw... edges. Borders where a thing was and wasn't, where the light changed hue, changed direction. I saw the surface of the water and through the surface of the water to the edge of the rock shelf I sat on; I saw things in the water that I hadn't even noticed with human eyes or even with my shark's ability to sense electricity. It was kind of like... like being in a dark room and sensing where walls and shelves began and ended by how it changed sound quality. That, but with light. It wasn't difficult to use. I knew where everything around me was. I just had no way to pick colors or shapes from each other, other than the fact that they were  _different_ ; one ended  _here_ , another began  _there_ . 

My fellow Animorphs stood out as complex networks of edges and lines, the stripes on their Leeran bodies much more prominent to Leeran eyes, making them look like moving versions of those 3D optical illusions. The patterns delineated very clearly how they were posed, what they were looking at, and what part of their tentacles I was seeing, in ways that had been obscure to human sight.

Sound... sound was dull, hollow above the water. Harsh. I dove into the ocean, and it mellowed into a rich tapestry of humming and movement that I hadn't noticed as a shark. The water around me sang, my Leeran ears picking up tiny variations in water movement and the things swimming within it.

And taste... I could taste through my skin. No, through my vaseline-like coating. The salt level of the water was normal and natural. The oxygen level of the water was strangely high, not dangerously so, but a little higher than normal. Something slightly bitter drifted past my leg on a current and was gone. I reached out one tentacle to touch something in the water in front of me, some kind of ribbon-like organism; it darted away at my touch, but it tasted delicious.

Even as it darted away, its nervous system lit up in my mind in brilliant technicolor, the mere physical world paling in comparison. I could feel my own nerves pulsing, forming a network throughout my body that was more a lattice that could send information back and forth than the one-way, stringy branches in Earth animals. They clustered especially in my head, forming a brain. My friends, too, had their own nervous systems; so like mine, employed slightly differently. Things in the water around me had them – things on the  _stone_ around me had them! – cells reacting, communicating, forming something larger than themselves. And their very presence... you know how once you know how to read, you can't really look at words and just see the ink or paint or pencil any more? You look, and your mind says 'that's the letter M' long before it says 'that's some ink on paper'. It was kind of like that. It was impossible to be aware of the nerves without being aware of what the nerves were doing. I didn't just know that Jake had a motor network tipped with sensitive touch receptors (there seemed to be no difference in the nerve types for Leerans) in his tentacles; I knew he was telling them to lift, to wave experimentally. I knew that Rachel, still up on the ledge, found the taste of the surface unpleasantly salty. I knew that something deep within the stone next to me felt us move against the rock, and was unconcerned.

I missed my mother.

She was probably dead, I thought. The human body is fragile, very fragile. And there'd been so much water. Not that I regretted it. I'd done what I have to do. The others would've died otherwise. No choice. It's not like I hadn't done my grieving already. I couldn't do that again. I couldn't put myself through that again. I couldn't sink like my dad had, I couldn't put him through that. I had to believe that she was okay, realism be damned, because it would all fall apart otherwise. She was probably back here on Leera. I had to believe that. No choice.

No choice but to smile and wave every time I went on a mission, to pretend that nothing was wrong. I'd never been as close to my mother as to my dad. With my dad, there was the Rehabilitation Center to bond over, but I didn't have that with Mom. No choice but to walk away with a smile every time, or sneak out and leave no note, and just hope that we'd see each other again.

And I feared we were only growing further apart. I mean, after Dad moved away, I would've suspected that we'd become closer. But she was always so busy, and I was left to take care of the girls while she worked late, which was impossible now with all the missions and stuff. Jordan was starting to take on a lot of the job, my job. What pathetic excuse had I given this time? Had I even bothered, or had I just told Jordan to put Sara to bed and stormed out? I couldn't even remember. She probably thought I was out meeting boys or doing drugs or something. But I just didn't have time to protect everyone any more. And no matter how much I threw at the enemy, trying to keep them away, they kept coming back stronger.

And they had kept me from home. I wasn't sure I could even remember what my mother had looked like when I'd left. My clearest memory of her was when I was a child, sneaking up on her to practice my 'warrior stealth' while she carved some kind of intricate pattern into the grass around her. Normally I'd bother my fathers, but they were both busy with important adult things, things that in my youth I found irrelevant and boring. As soon as I'd jumped out at her, she'd carved the pattern away with a single swipe, rubbed my head, and smiled at me. Called me her 'little warrior' with the smallest shred of sadness in her gestures. I remembered that more clearly than anything she'd said to me in the years since. And it hurt.

But it's not like I should really care, should I? The world didn't give a rat's rear about me. I didn't even know my mother. I'm sure they'd told me her name at some point, but I couldn't remember it; it was more than I had of my father, at least. Nobody even knew who he was. No, some people in this world didn't get family. I guess it was my fault, for not being likeable enough, but I'd stopped caring long ago. It was hard to care about the war, even; hard to care about much outside the five people who bothered to give me the time of day. And if I couldn't be loved, then I could be useful, and call that friendship.

I would do what I had to do, whatever I had to do, to protect those people. It was my responsibility to keep us together, alive; I couldn't break, no matter what happened. No matter how many times I had to sit at home, watching a vile invader look at us with my brother's eyes. Sometimes, the way he looked at us... well, I could handle it, I was an Animorph. But when he looked at Mom like that was when I felt true fear. I couldn't help but wonder if it would someday come to a head-on confrontation. About what I would do.

I usually stopped that train of thought before I got to the answer. I didn't want to know what it was.

<Um,> Tobias said.

There was something wrong with the way we were thinking, any idiot could see that. Actually picking out  _what_ was happening was more difficult. It didn't feel like thought-speak, of course; but the Leerans were telepathic in a whole different way, weren't they? It was hard to be sure but they probably used a zero-point chemical filter primed for specific biological transfer; the real question was how such a thing could have evolved and what the biological origin of such a system could be. But was there any reason to limit ourselves to what humans would think of as organic components? Of course not. I mean, the DNA... a simplification, the morphing technology would work with several types of living being, not necessarily with the same sorts of DNA structure found on Earth – but then where did you define 'life'? – and the real question was what made the Leeran's ability so universally applicable given their own unusual nerve structure and that just brought us back to the question of how yeerks could infest so many species but maybe that wasn't entirely relevant I guess it only mattered if – 

<Who cares  _how_ it's happening?! We need a way to make it stop! > Rachel snapped angrily. 

I could understand that anger. It was pretty frustrating to be dragged along a train of thought about something irrelevant like the local biology when there was a war on. I hoped my cousins and uncles in battle were okay. I hoped we could find a way home. But first we needed to deal with this telepathy thing, because it was getting very difficult to focus. To control the morph.

It  _was_ just a morph, though. And it was just a sense. There was probably a way to shut it off.

I dug through the Leeran's mind for a bit until I found the part to suppress. My world went quiet, and I relaxed.

<Guys?> I said. <There's totally a – >

<We got it, we saw you do it,> Marco said. <Oh, man. I just want to say, whatever any of you guys saw in my mind, it wasn't real.>

<Yeah,> Rachel said. <Mine neither.>

<Yup. Totally made up,> Tobias added quickly.

<Well,> I said, <now that this is sufficiently awkward, does anybody know how to use these water jets?>

We all looked at Ax.

Ax flicked a couple of tentacles in what I took to be a mildly irritated manner and swam past me to the little vehicles. He mounted one and played with the controls for about a minute, shooting forward, stopping, and turning in a little circle.

<They are simple joystick controls,> he said. <Three sticks; propulsion, up-down orientation, and left-right orientation. They are weighted to remain upright with respect to sideways motion.>

I jumped onto one of the little jets and wrapped a tentacle around each control stick. We quickly familiarised ourselves with the controls and exited the cave.

The Leerans' directions to the city were clear. They'd also told us of some patrol 'hotspots' to watch out for. I hoped they'd be okay, that the yeerks wouldn't suspect that they survived in the caves and go looking for them. For their own sakes, and for ours.

We avoided the patrols easily. They saw us at a distance, approaching on our yeerk-issued water jets and generally acting like we had every reason to be there, and simply ignored us. We stayed out of mind reading range as we headed for the city.

And the city itself...

I knew from the Leerans that it was called the City of Worms. Or more accurately, it was named after the general impression of the movement of schools of a particular type of tiny, worm-like being that lived around the black smokers farther out in the ocean. It stood as a sort of conical helix on the ocean floor and reaching upward toward the surface. The water was shallow enough and clear enough that we could make out almost the entire thing, from base to top. Several upside-down hemispheres were spaced out in big rings around the city, trapping air within. Each looked about the size of my house.

The city wouldn't have made much sense on Earth. But then, we didn't build cities underwater. The City of Worms had doors and tunnels built into the sides of spires, sticking out at all kinds of angles. The builders hadn't restricted themselves to assumptions about people only entering from the bottom, or wanting to be oriented upward.

<Are we sure the city is safe?> Marco asked as we approached.

<The Leerans seemed to think so,> Tobias said with a mental shrug.

<They said it was free as far as they knew. If they're wrong, we're about to broadcast our secrets to an entire city of Controllers.>

Near the center of the city were two large round buildings, floating about halfway up, that... bent light differently to the rest. The Leeran equivalent of an unusual color, I supposed. I wasn't familiar enough with their style of sight to know exactly what that mean, but I pointed it out to the others.

Ax recognised the shape. <They are not buildings, they are craft,> he told us. <They are andalite submarines.> He sounded excited. Or tense, at least.

<So you were correct about what you think the strategy is?> Tobias asked.

<Yes. Perhaps. There may be other reasons for them to be here. It all depends on if they have scientists.>

<... scientists?>

<Yes.>

<Well,> Jake said,<we're here. Let's go say hello.>

We abandoned the water jets and swam up toward the submarines. As we got closer, we saw that they were connected to the huge cone that made up the center of the city by a long, transparent tube. I wondered briefly why they didn't just put them directly on it and save on tubing. Politics, maybe.

We headed for the center of the city instead. The Leerans made no move to stop us. We entered through one of the many little doors, and found ourselves in a long tunnel filled with water, not unlike the tunnel that had lead to the underground cave. Suddenly, new directions were in my mind; I knew which side tunnel to turn into, how far to go, when to turn again.

After a few tunnels, the water was replaced by air. Tobias immediately started to demorph. After a moment, the rest of us followed suit.

<Ready to be the big tough rebel leader for some andalites, 'Prince' Jake?> Marco asked as he demorphed. Jake smacked him with a tentacle.

The tunnel was well lit by bright bluish-white lights along the right wall. It was about the width of a normal corridor and moved upward at a slight angle. We followed it for some distance before the ground beneath our feet began to change, with spongy yellow fungus and violet grass-like vegetation springing up. The corridor forked into three. A large wooden stick was propped up against the wall near the fork; Ax picked it up and inspected it, running his hands up and down the wood.

“What is it?” Rachel asked.

< _Taktalu_ . A signpost. > He eyed it suspiciously, putting it back down. He shaved a small amount of vegetation from the ground, lifted it on his tailblade, and peered at it closely, running it through his fingers.

<Is everything alright?> Tobias asked.

<I believe that everything may be according to plan.>

I leaned closer to look at the wood, and immediately felt a wave of dizziness overcome me. I slid sideways into the wall.

“Cassie?” Jake asked, reaching out to help me up.

“I'm fine. I've been getting dizzy ever since we got to the Ascalin.”

<Me, too,> Tobias said. <You don't think it's something to do with being in Zero-Space, do you?>

“Why is it always you two?” Marco asked.

“Why is what always us two?” I asked.

“Brain weirdness.”

“Uh-uh,” Rachel said. “Jake remembers an alternate timeline.”

“Okay, true,” Marco conceded. “But Tobias is basically an interstellar radio tower, what with Elfangor and Ax's distress signal and the Ellimist, and Cassie was also all dizzy and fainting with the distress thing.”

“That was _one time_ ,” I protested. “After we saw the video of that wreckage washing up, Tobias and I fainted _once_. It's not like we're falling all over the place.”

“Until now.”

Ax was watching us carefully. <I am sure it is nothing important,> he said. <It will fade with time.> He flicked a stalk eye toward the right tunnel. <Prince Galuit-Enilon-Esgarrouth should be this way.>

<Oh, well, so long as random dizziness is _nothing to worry about_ ,> Tobias said sarcastically, but Ax was already walking away.

We headed down the corridor, the atmosphere getting more and more tense as we travelled. I could watch Jake's face become more and more blank as we walked, a hard shell of determination settling over his features like armor. Rachel became antsy, seeming to have to hold herself back from simply running ahead. Ax became more tense and apprehensive. He moved ahead of us and didn't look at us, not even with his stalk eyes.

And then the corridor, suddenly, ended.

It opened into a vast dome, perhaps the size of a few city blocks. A large glowing spire in the center of the dome shed light on the surrounding violet-and-yellow carpet of vegetation. There were several buildings around the outer edge, semicircular constructions of metal and stone with woven roofs that looked vaguely familiar. It took me a moment to realise that they looked a lot like Ax's scoop. A large pool of water stretched out before the glowing spire.

“It looks like the Dome ship,” I whispered. “You know, without the gardens and stuff. And with more buildings.”

“It looks like the Yeerk Pool,” Marco whispered back. “In miniature.”

There were a few andalites running about on the grass, looking alert and stern. They largely ignored us. One trotted over. Ax stepped forward to meet him.

<I am – >

<We know who you are,> the andalite said. <Come. Prince Galuit is waiting for you.>

I took Jake's hand, gave it a little reassuring squeeze. He squeezed back. Then we separated again; he walked next to Ax, and the rest of us moved in behind him.

The andalite led us down another tunnel, into a smaller room. Inside, two andalites who were having a fast sign conversation. I don't know much about how andalites age, but they looked a fair bit older than the other andalites we'd seen. Both had longer, shaggier hair than Ax, with broad hooves and somewhat wrinkled faces. Their eyes weren't the bright green of every other andalite I'd ever seen, but a darker, muddier color. One of them looked especially strange – his fur wasn't blue like most andalites, but a pale bluish violet, almost the color of the grassy vegetation beneath our feet. His tailblade was smaller and finer than Ax's, and his hooves broad and flat. He stood about half a head shorter than his companion, almost as small as Ax. Perhaps the strangest thing was that his fur coat wasn't uniform – intricate designs had been shaved into it, all lines and dots and spiky shapes, revealing layers of blue and white underneath. I got dizzy just looking at them.

There were also several Leerans stationed around the walls. They watched us carefully.

<Force Commander,> our escort said stiffly. <The humans have arrived, with _aristh_ Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill. >

The strange andalite looked at us carefully, brushed one hand down the side of the face of his companion and left, followed by our escort. Ax gave them plenty of room to pass us, keeping a stalk eye on them until they were gone.

Prince Galuit gave a quick series of signs to Ax, who immediately moved to stand behind him. Then he turned to us. After scanning the group for a few seconds, his eyes settled on Jake.

<You would be the leader of this team?> he asked. <You will take your troops and – >

Rachel stepped swiftly between Jake and Galuit, arms crossed. “Our Prince's name is Jake,” she said, “and we brought Aximili here to make a report.”

<We will question the _aristh_ in our own time. >

“Then you'll speak with our Prince in that time, because the _aristh_ 's report has important context,” I said, crossing my own arms.

Galuit narrowed his eyes at Jake, who said nothing. After several long seconds, he turned a stalk eye to Ax. < _Aristh_? Report. >

<Sir.> Ax stood to attention. <We come from the Ascalin, which was destroyed in atmosphere above the planet surface.>

<Yes, we saw the explosion. Details?>

<The Ascalin was intentionally destroyed by Tactical Officer Harelin to prevent it from crash-landing on top of andalite forces. The warriors aboard gave their lives to protect their brothers.> Ax's tail and stalk eyes drooped a little. <The controls had been frozen and encrypted on an intentional crash course by Captain Samalin, who revealed himself as an ally of the yeerk forces.>

<Captain Samalin? A traitor? Samalin served under Elfangor himself. Perhaps you misread the situation?>

<He cleared the bridge with a single Shredder, removed Officer Harelin's tail, and attempted to take him aboard the one functional escape pod as a hostage. He specified that he was a gift for Visser Four.>

<You left in this escape pod, I assume?>

<Yes, on Officer Harelin's orders.>

<And how did you escape the Captain's slaughter?>

Ax hesitated.

Tobias answered for him. <We survived because the Captain thought us beneath his notice,> he said quietly. It wasn't a threat, exactly, but his tone made his meaning clear. In a slightly brighter voice, he continued, < _Aristh_ Aximili decapitated the traitor and Officer Harelin sent us to deliver the news to you. >

Galuit looked at Ax for a long moment. <This... explains much,> he said eventually.

“You understand why we might be somewhat reluctant to blindly trust whatever you have to tell us, Force Commander,” Rachel said from her position in front of Jake.

<The Leerans – >

“We ran into Leeran-Controllers on our way here,” Marco said, coming to stand beside Rachel. “So far as they were aware, the city hadn't been compromised. But a lot can change in a short period of time.”

Galuit ignored both of them to glare at Jake. <I will not have my honor impugned like this,> he snapped.

Jake said nothing.

“Prince Jake?” Rachel asked.

Jake ignored Galuit's glare and scanned the surrounding Leerans. “I am sorry,” he said. “But I need to ask one of you to prove it.”

<Yes,> a Leeran replied in their version of thought-speak, <this is an acceptable sacrifice to prove ourselves to our new allies.> The Leeran moved forward.

Marco put a hand on Jake's arm and shook his head. Jake shot him a questioning look.

“Prince Jake,” he said in a low voice, “if I were planning a Skrull invasion, I'd keep one normal human on the team.”

“They're telepathic,” Jake replied.

I didn't know what a Skrull invasion was, but I understood Marco's intent. “Blackmail,” I said. “Threats. Assistant Principal Chapman.”

Jake nodded, once. “Cassie, pick.”

I pointed to a Leeran at random. The Leeran stepped forward.

“ _Aristh_ Aximili, might I borrow the use of your tailblade, please?” Jake asked politely. Ax looked at Galuit, who looked, puzzled, at the Leeran. After a moment, Galuit made an affirmative gesture, and Ax's tailblade whipped forward, slicing the back off the Leeran's head. The Leeran fell over, and I dashed forward to help them up.

“We're sorry about that,” I muttered. “Really. We have to be sure.”

The Leeran knew what signal I was waiting for. They waved their tentacles up and down. Yes, they were free. Yes, the city was free.

I helped them limp over to one of the other Leerans, and gave my Prince a nod before returning to my spot behind him.

<Was that necessary?> Galuit asked testily.

“Yes,” Jake said. He waved his hand in an 'it's ok' gesture and Rachel and Marco moved back out of the way. “My apologies, Prince Galuit, and also to our Leeran friends. Deception has already cost too many lives in this war.”

<True enough, Prince Jake,> Galuit said cautiously. I could see him making a visible effort to stay calm.

<He seems mad,> Tobias noted to us privately. <I'd probably be mad if somebody burst into my meadow, accused me of being a traitor, and sliced the back of my ally's head, too.>

Jake didn't acknowledge the remark, but his body language became much less confrontational – a gesture wasted, presumably, on an andalite. “You were saying that you need our help?”

<Indeed,> he said. <It is high-risk, but the fate of the planet – >

“We'll do it,” Jake said, waving away Galuit's justifications with one hand. “What do you need?”

Galuit blinked at him. <You agree before you hear of the mission?>

“Yes. What do you need?”

<I had heard of your exploits on Earth, but I was not aware that you were so reckless.>

Jake looked mildly irritated. “If your warriors could accomplish this mission, you would not have waited for mine. You say that the fate of the planet depends on it. _Aristh_ Aximili has confidence in your plan, whatever it is, and I have learned to trust his judgement. Now are you going to stand around critiquing my risk awareness, or are we going to save this planet?”

<Very well.> Galuit met Jake with a level stare with his main eyes. <We need you to blow up the continent.>


	7. Chapter 7

I don't know what I had been expecting Galuit to say, but it wasn't that.

Marco looked as baffled as I was. Rachel grinned excitedly, earning a characteristically expressionless look from Tobias. Jake glanced at Ax, who didn't seem at all surprised by Galuit's announcement.

This was what Ax had realised? This was the plan? Blow up the continent?

“The _entire_ continent?” Marco asked.

<Most of it,> Galuit said. <Some small traces are expected to survive.>

“Just how many species will we be driving extinct by doing this?” I asked.

<Nothing intelligent,> Galuit said dismissively. <Leeran land life is primitive.>

I set my jaw, thinking of termites, but fell silent. My instincts told me that the only one who could start an argument here was Jake. I didn't want to undermine his authority.

Besides, the logic seemed obvious. The Leeran cities were underwater. The yeerks were establishing a foothold to invade from the continent. Let their forces gather there, then blow it up. Destroy the invasion in one fell swoop. Oh, sure, there would be some Leeran-Controllers scattered about the ocean, and probably some yeerks in space, but with the bulk of their invading army dead, no existing land to establish a base on and the andalite and Leeran forces intact, what chance did they have?

“How much time do we have?” Jake asked.

<The explosives were supposed to go off in approximately one local day.>

Which in Earth hours was... what? I glanced at one of the Leerans, and instantly knew that their day was a little over sixteen hours.

Jake nodded. “My warriors have have very little rest over the past two Earth days,” he said. “They will need to recover their strength.”

 _Had_ it been nearly two days? The talk in the forest, becoming squirrels, the  Ascalin thing, all the flying... suddenly, I felt very tired.

Galuit seemed about to say something, but before he could, a pair of Leerans waddled forward.

<Yes,> one of them said, <our new friends should rest. A place will be prepared for you. Come.>

The five of us trooped out after the Leerans and down yet another corridor. Leerans seemed to like corridors. We left Ax with the Force Commander. I wanted to turn, to say goodbye. But my instinct told me that to an andalite, that wasn't the behaviour of a warrior.

The Leerans led us into a small chamber that other Leerans were clearly trying to make fit for human habitation. Frankly I found the mind-reading-based anticipating of our needs a little creepy, but it was hard to deny that it was efficient. Some kind of curtain of woven seaweed-like matter had been hung over the open doorway to provide at least the illusion of privacy. There were several raised platforms emerging from the walls, and they had been covered in gelatinous cushions and seaweed blankets. On an uncovered platform stood a few large pink stone jugs containing clean water, and cups chipped from the same material. I could tell they had just been made – they still had stone dust on them. One of the Leerans turned to us.

<May we have some of your blood?> the Leeran asked, pulling out a long... well, I guess it was a needle. I pulled down my glove sleeve and offered my arm.

“Hang on, why do you need our blood?” Rachel asked.

<We must determine enough of your biochemistry to know what sorts of food to bring you,> the Leeran answered. <Without this knowledge you may be accidentally poisoned.

“You can get that much information from _blood_?” I asked, fascinated.

<No, but we are told that we can make a crude determination. It will tell us at least the basis of your biochemistry.>

Marco looked doubtfully at their tentacles. “I'd... rather if Cassie did it,” he said. “She has experience with Earth life and stuff.”

The Leeran didn't seem offended; they just handed me their supply of needles and a brief telepathic message on how to use them. I carefully drew my friends' blood and my own and handed them back. Marco still flinched, even with me holding the needle. Sometimes I wonder if Marco remembers he can morph injuries away. Maybe he just doesn't like needles.

The Leerans left us alone, closing the curtain behind them.

We relaxed.

Rachel dissolved into giggles.

Marco was shaking his head, smiling. “Oh, man. Well done, 'Prince Jake'.”

“That went alright, didn't it?” Jake asked, looking worried. “We did okay?”

“I thought it went great,” I said with a shrug.

Rachel nodded, but since she was laughing too hard to breathe, I didn't put much stock in that reaction.

<Hey,> Tobias said. <We got respect this time.>

“That wasn't 'behold these worthy warriors' respect,” Marco said, shaking his head. “That was 'let's step cautiously around the crazy aliens' respect.”

<Respect is respect. I'll take it.>

“I,” I announced to the room at large, “am going to sleep.” I found a surface with some pillows and blankets and lay down.

“Animorphs alien planet sleepover!” Marco said, much more enthusiastically than I had the energy for. “I vote we play Spin the Bottle.” He winked at Rachel, who picked up a stone cup, held it as if she was about to throw it, and raised an eyebrow at him.

I closed my eyes, determined to ignore them.

“We should definitely rest,” Jake agreed, finding some blankets and pillows of his own. “I don't know how Galuit expects us to blow up a continent but I bet it's going to be exhausting and dangerous.”

<Hooray,> Tobias said sourly.

If he said anything else, I didn't hear it. I was already asleep.


	8. Chapter 8

I slept really well, considering.

I don't remember dreaming. I just close my eyes, and woke again surrounded by Animorphs. Marco was stretched out on the floor. Jake was curled up on a ledge on the opposite side of the room, snoring. Tobias was perched on some kind of spire above us, and looked at me when I sat up.

“Where's Rachel?” I asked, rubbing sleep out of my eyes.

<No idea. I assume she went exploring.>

“I'll see if I can find her before the boys wake up.” I pushed the curtain aside and headed out into the tunnel.

It wasn't long before there was vegetation under my feet again, suggesting that I was approaching the andalites. I hesitated. I wasn't sure I wanted to talk to Galuit without Jake, and I didn't want to make a mistake with any of his underlings. And Ax... I trusted Ax, really. I did. But the Ax we'd been dealing with since finding the andalites again was so different to the Ax we'd dealt with on Earth. He'd held his _tail_ to Rachel's _throat_. I'd never seen him do that to anybody he didn't think was a Controller. And he didn't trust us, because of... because of the way a traitor had spoken to him while holding him at gunpoint?

Not the problem, right now. The problem right now was finding Rachel in the underwater alien base and blowing up a continent. (Wow, our lives had gotten weird.)

I wandered into the giant andalite dome, and the violet andalite immediately trotted over, followed closely by Ax.

<Hello!> he called, speaking with his hands even as he thought-spoke.

“Hello,” I said shyly, imitating the gesture without thinking.

<This is Glen-Chieftainess Keilin-Telemar-Druin,> Ax said. <Prince Galuit is her husband. Chieftainess, this is Cassie the human.>

<It is just Keilin here, _aristh_ ,> Keilin said gently. <I left the duties of my rank with the People.> She looked at me with some interest. <Aximili tells me much about you. Forgive my curiosity, I have never seen a human before.>

“I've, uh, never seen a female andalite before,” I replied.

Keilin laughed mentally. <These both seem to be symptoms of a problem that we will have to rectify once this war if over,> she said. <Aximili has been telling me of fascinating things about your culture. Is it true that you sterilise and tenderise your food with heat before eating it?>

“Uh... some foods, yes,” I said. “I'm looking for one of my friends. Rachel. She has yellow hair, pale pink skin, about so high...” I indicated Rachel's height with one hand.

<I am sorry, we have not seen any other humans.> Keilin looked at me even more closely. <'She'? A female warrior is with you?>

<Cassie is also female,> Ax said. <Human males and females both fight.>

<You look much like the other humans. Very little sexual dimorphism, like hork-bajir. Fascinating.>

“Uh... yeah.” I thought Keilin looked more like a male andalite than I looked like a male human, but she probably looked for different differences than I did. “Wait, if andalite women don't fight, why are you here?”

<Sometimes members of the People will accompany their relatives on long campaigns,> Ax said. He didn't sound happy about it. If anything, I detected a note of anger and suspicion in his mental voice. <I would not have thought this campaign likely to last long enough to be worth the trouble. But then, I am only an _aristh_. >

Keilin glanced sharply at him. <Indeed,> she said. She looked back at me. <Tell me then, human, what you think of the Leerans?>

“They seem like nice people,” I said. “I'm not... entirely comfortable with the telepathy. Our species values privacy.”

<And that is the purpose of the artificial skin, yes?>

“Sort of, yeah.” I picked at my glove.

<We too value privacy, although perhaps in a different manner. Some of the warriors have expressed concern that the thought reading makes them somewhat like yeerks. What do you think?>

I couldn't shake the feeling that I was being tested. “You could equally claim that it makes them like andalites,” I said. “You are communicating with me via thought-speak right now, are you not?”

<A well made point.> Keilin smiled. <It is a fascinating planet, is it not?>

“So fascinating!” I enthused.

<Did you notice the light?>

“Yes! So much of it! Why are the oceans so _clear_? Isn't that weird?”

<Much of it is too low-frequency for our eyes. The warriors do not understand what I am talking about. But the ocean should be full of photosynthetic organisms.>

“Definitely! Nutrient restriction I'd understand for a local area, but we haven't seen any water that isn't clear. The local life should've found a way to deal with the environment they have, surely. I mean, it's _water_.”

<I suspect a drastic environmental change. The Leerans are somewhat evasive on the matter.>

“What about the surface, though? On our planet – and on yours too, I know, I've seen them in a Dome ship – vegetation should be competing for height to exploit the light. All we've seen is ground matter and rocks.”

<I did not get a chance to see much of the surface,> Keilin said wistfully. <I wish that I could have.> She turned swiftly, her attention drawn by an andalite warrior across the field who was signalling her. <It was good to meet you, Cassie,> she said as she left.

“You t-- ugh.” I squeezed my eyes shut as a wave of dizziness overtook me. Keilin was already leaving, but Ax stepped forward and steadied me.

<Are you feeling alright?> he asked.

“No, I'm not. I'm dizzy and I'm scared.”

<The dizziness will pass.>

“Will it? Do you even know what it is?”

<Yes.> Ax looked contrite. <At least, I think I do. I believe it is my fault.>

“How could this possibly be your fault?”

<My distress signal, when you came to rescue me. I wanted to be sure that only my uncles would intercept it. I included several culturally-specific triggers, including a zero-space connection and the visual stimulus of _takta_ , our... written script. Perhaps I have misunderstood, but you are feeling this when you look at andalite writing, correct?>

The screens on the Ascalin. The signpost. Keilin's fur designs. “... Yeah.” How had I not noticed that?

<This can happen if an unusual stimulus is chosen, one that the receiver does not encounter often. It is called _thalhu_. Your brain is associating _takta_ with my distress signal and trying to replay it. It will weaken and pass as you are exposed to the stimulus. >

“So I'm supposed to blow up an alien continent for your people while your writing makes me too sick to focus. Wow, that doesn't sound impossible or anything.” I was too dizzy to tone down the sarcasm.

<I apologise for this. It was unintentional.>

I bit back my response. It wasn't really Ax's fault. And my head was already clearing. It was easier, knowing what to look for, being able to recognise it as the sudden sensation of falling into the ocean instead of random, unexplained dizziness.

“How are you doing, Ax?” I asked quietly.

<Very well, thank you,> he said. He seemed much less tense than the previous day. Perhaps he'd had some time to think through the shock of what had happened on the Ascalin. Perhaps being among his own people had helped. Perhaps he was just relieved that his ordeal on Earth was over.

An Earth that we had no idea how to get back to.

I tried not to think about it.

“Cassie!” Jake came up behind me, smiling. He held some kind of bulbous purple fruit out to me. “You should eat something.”

I took the fruit and sniffed it. “We're sure this is safe?”

“Well... the Leerans seem to think so.” He shrugged. He looked at Ax, and the light in his eyes dimmed, but didn't fade. “Hey, Ax.”

<Hello, Jake.>

I left them to their conversation and but into the strange fruit. It didn't taste bad. Strange, yes, but not bad. Fairly sweet with just a touch of bitterness in the skin. The juice was thick and syrupy.

Strange, that we could be somewhere so different to Earth, and still have something so like fruit. I'd felt the long, living things in the rocks, sensed the invisible beasts in the ocean. There were things on Leera beyond my understanding – probably beyond my very ability to understand. And yet there were things familiar enough to be mistaken for Earth life, at least in a broad sense. I took another bite.

Once everyone had properly woken up and we'd eaten enough to take the edge off our hunger (we were reluctant to eat more of the alien food than we had to), we went to meet Prince Galuit again. We still hadn't found Rachel, but the four remaining Animorphs stood before a small entourage of andalite warriors. Jake stood out front, arms crossed, eyes rarely leaving Galuit's. Marco to his left, eyes scanning the immediate area for anything notable, including the warriors. Me to his right, eyes on the hands and eyestalks and tails of the Andalites and the tentacles of the Leerans, trying to track their mood. Tobias on my shoulder, trying not to cause too much damage with his talons as he surveyed the area.

There were a lot more andalites than Animorphs. Keilin wasn't there, but Ax was. I got the impression that a lot of the warriors behind Galuit didn't need to be there. They probably just wanted a good look at us.

“Force Commander,” Jake said with a short nod.

<Prince Jake,> the Force Commander responded, dipping his tail slightly. <Are your warriors ready for battle?>

“They are.”

<You seem to have one less.>

“We've lost track of her. She is probably patrolling for threats,” Jake said, which was the most diplomatic way to say 'got bored and wandered off' that I'd ever heard. 

Galuit's eyes narrowed. <How do you 'lose' a warrior?>

“My people don't require me to order them to do every aspect of their jobs,” Jake replied evenly.

<He's good at this,> Tobias commented, presumably privately. <Kind of scary.>

I nodded, very slightly. I wanted to ask Tobias if he was worried about Rachel, but couldn't. Damn my lack of thought-speak.

A Leeran waved their tentacles to draw our attention. <Friends,> they said, <the one you call Rachel disappeared from the City of Worms while you slept.>

Tobias' raptor gaze locked onto the Leeran. <Disappeared? What do you mean, 'disappeared'?>

<It was sleeping, and then vanished.>

“Left, you mean?” I asked. “To where?”

<We do not know. It did not exit the room.>

“And you didn't think to rouse us and tell us this?” Jake asked, his voice low, cold, dangerous. The chill almost hid the thread of worry in it.

<We assumed it was normal human activity – >

“You're mind-readers!” Marco practically shouted. 

<We respect this strange concept of 'privacy' borne by our alien friends and have tried to remain as unobtrusive as possible. We prefer not to read thoughts of which our knowledge is unwanted, and as such – >

Ax broke in. <You call this a respect for privacy?> he asked, flicking a stalk-eye toward the ground and stomping at the vegetation with his hoof. <This is how you stay out of thoughts where you are not wanted?>

The Leeran met his gaze. <You fear that this is the result of us respecting privacy than you fear that we have not,> they said evenly. <We feel that this says more about you than about us.>

< _Aristh_ ,> Galuit said warningly. Ax looked away from the Leeran and stood to attention. Galuit turned a stalk eye to one of the warriors behind him. <Talthianon, you will investigate this disappearance. The yeerks do not have the technology to execute this sort of abduction, but I want to know who does, or if this is not enemy action, I want to know what is going on.>

<Yes, Force Commander.>

I wished  _I_ knew what was going on. 

“The plan?” Jake asked. I could see the tension in his shoulders. I wanted to grip his hand, to lend him my support, but I was too busy playing the good little warrior while he played the tough Prince. Neither of us could help Rachel right at that moment. We had to get all the information, and then decide what to do. 

<The plan, yes. The continent was rigged to explode after the yeerk forces were almost entirely deployed. The initial plan was to have the remaining spacebound warriors deploy to guard the front line right as the yeerks initiated their attack in a bid for the planet. The fresh warriors should slow the attack long enough to allow their own forces to settle in behind them before the attack line reached the main andalite bases and forced a final retreat, giving us time to prime the final explosives and detonate them behind us. In most places, the plan went off perfectly. But one ship's crew failed to arrive and slow the assault.>

“The Ascalin,” Jake said.

<Indeed. The Ascalin's crew were placed to defend the detonation point. There is a system of sound-sensitive crystalline rocks covering part of the continent, which can be primed to explode on contact by using a very specific set of harmonic frequencies. These rocks stretch deep underground and, with the added assistance of several carefully placed explosives, could tear the continent apart.>

“We saw that,” Jake said. “But the yeerks attacked, and the andalites shut the explosive signal off.”

<They had not had time to prepare the final explosives or to set up the harmonic chain,> Galuit said. <The yeerks were destroying the individual rocks. There was no choice but to turn off the grid while enough rocks remained to fulfil the objective. But now the grid is off, the final explosive is not primed, and our forces cannot penetrate the yeerk forces to rectify this. There are Leeran-Controllers patrolling the shores. Our one advantage is that the yeerks have no reason to suspect anything special about the site, but they could begin attempting to reverse-engineer the defenses at any moment, and if they do, they will eventually discover our plan.>

Jake nodded. “You need somebody to sneak past the yeerk forces, prime a bomb, refine and activate the sonic rock thing, and detonate the rocks without letting the yeerks – which include mind readers – figure out what's happening?”

<Yes.>

Jake turned to look at us. “Thoughts?”

“Sounds doable,” Marco said. “I mean, it's not like it's the most insane thing we've ever done, right?”

<I'm pretty sure it is, actually,> Tobias pointed out.

“The Leeran-Controllers are a problem,” I mused. “A bypassable problem, but... limiting. Still. Doable.” 

“The big problem is if we have to do this before finding Rachel,” Marco said. “Can you imagine how upset she's going to be if she doesn't get to help blow up a continent?” 

<There's the tech problem, obviously,> Tobias added. <None of us know how to prime bombs or sonic landmine devices or anything.>

Jake looked at Galuit.

<I will send one of my technicians with you,> he said. <He will be under your command for the duration of the mission.>

“Sounds good,” Jake said. “One question. Why us? What makes you think we'll be better at this than your own warriors? It's an andalite mission.” 

<We have been monitoring your effects on the war through the ongoing conflict on Earth. We do not have access to details, but it seems that your use of... the  _escafil_ technology that you were able to discover... is creative and versatile. We cannot infiltrate the continent in our own bodies, and our range of alternate forms is limited and rarely utilised. Your unique experience in this area and wider variety of forms is, in this mission, an advantage, and the yeerks here will be unfamiliar with Earth forms and unsure how to deal with them. >

“A nice big Dracon blast is normally enough,” Marco said drily. Jake shot him a look, and he pretended to look contrite for the andalite audience.

<Jake,> Tobias said privately to us Animorphs, <how specialised is the tech knowledge?>

“The bombs,” Jake said aloud. “How difficult is priming them? Will we need to buy your technician much time?”

<Not difficult, for somebody who knows the sequences. If you can get him in, it is a simple operation.>

Jake nodded. “I want Aximili.”

<The  _aristh_ ? He is not trained in this sort of operation. >

“No, but he has experience working with humans; specifically, he has experience working with my team. I don't have time to give your technician a crash course in human battle strategy and command structure and I don't have time to take one on andalites. Ax has been on Earth a long time. He knows how to read my tone, he knows what information we need, he knows how to anticipate our actions and we know how to anticipate his. Besides which, we know his array of morphs and what they can do. If you sent us in with somebody new, especially somebody with limited morphs, we'll have to spend a lot of time catching local wildlife that none of us know anything about and trying to fit his capabilities to ours. If you can teach Aximili the tech knowledge and we take him, this mission becomes a lot less risky.”

<Lerail, can the  _aristh_ do it? >

<Uh... yes, Force Commander, with instruction.>

<Then he is yours. Anything else?>

Jake shook his head, seemed to realise the gesture would mean nothing to the Commander, and instead said, “No, I believe that's all we need. But it is vitally important that we find our teammate.”

Talthianon looked over us. <This may be an after-effect of your time spent in zero-space,> he said. <I would like to interview each of your warriors on the matter, if you do not mind.>

“Provided they agree, I have no objection,” Jake shrugged. “Tobias, when you have a moment, can you do a sweep and see if she's morphed something that the Leerans can't detect?” Tobias, unlike the rest of us, could thought-speak to her, even if she was an insect or some such thing.

<It's... been a lot longer than two hours, Jake. Why would she do that?>

He shrugged again. “We should cover all our bases. I'll check the room we were in for clues. Marco, the passage we entered through, in case she left again somehow. Cassie, talk to the andalites about the zero-space thing.”

I frowned at him. He answered me with a blank stare. I could see his point – out of all of us, I was the best equipped to interact with the andalites. I'd picked up a few snippets of their culture from Ax, and while I didn't know much of their language, I at least knew how it  _worked_ . But Rachel was my best friend. If she was missing, I wanted to be looking. 

Of course, I couldn't argue in front of the andalites.

“Yes, Prince Jake,” I muttered.

Jake nodded. “We can move out once Aximili has been briefed on the bombs,” he said. “Let's try to find her by then.”

And with that, everyone was gone. Tobias to glide through the tunnels of the alien city, silently calling for his friend. (Or more than friends, if my own little theory was right.) Jake to search the room where his cousin had gone missing, and most likely to find nothing and sink to the floor in frustration, wondering what he could've done, what mistake he'd made. Marco to retread the same tunnel dozens of times, cursing Rachel in one breath and calling her in the next, looking for something constructive to do that didn't feel like such a waste of time.

Talthianon and I headed to a secluded corner of the underground meadow.

<My name is Talthianon-Gafinilan-Malorn,> he told me, running his hands trough the signs. Like all andalite signs, they were slightly too fast for me to follow easily, but my practice with Ax made it a lot easier than it would be otherwise. I had a feel for how the hands moved, I realised, and recognised several of the syllables.

_Hello, Talthianon-Gafinilan-Malorn_ , I tried to sign as I said, “My name is Cassandra-Louise-Williams.” 

_Hello_ , he signed back, followed by a jumble of name-signs I didn't recognise. When he saw me studying his hands, he smiled an andalite smile and did them again, more slowly. I tried to imitate him. I recognised the  _cas-_ and the  _-li-_ , but not much else. The  _Louise_ transition eluded me completely. I'd ask Ax about it later.

Except I wouldn't get a chance to, would I? Not if we could find a way home. If we couldn't... well, then I guess I'd have as much time as I wanted to learn to speak Andalite.

<How long were you in zero-space?> he asked me.

“I don't know,” I said. “Time's kind of...” No, wait a minute, I did know. Rachel was in cardiac arrest, nobody was dead... I tried to think back on if I knew anything about surviving in a vaccuum. My mom ranted about bad science in movies sometimes... “Uh. Probably somewhere between fifteen seconds and a minute? I don't have our medical records but given what it _felt_ like, that would probably be consistent.”

<And exactly how were you drawn in?>

“We're not sure. Ax... _aristh_ Aximili... said once that if you're in a small morph, your extra mass in zero-space is vulnerable. We were small animals at the time, and kind of assumed that it had something to do with that. Is... is my friend okay?”

<I do not know, Cassandra. This is... largely theoretical. Being drawn into zero-space is such a rare event that many assume the incidences where it has happened to be mere rumor, and I have never spoken to somebody who was rescued.>

And rescued by an andalite ship, too. We could've ended up with the yeerks, or... well, I didn't know how many species travelled through z-space, but it was probably a lot. And we'd not only been picked up by an andalite ship, but an andalite ship headed to a planet where our help was needed to fight the yeerks.

Weird. Really, really weird.

I didn't have enough information on the war, on the distribution of yeerks and andalites, or on physics to be able to figure out exactly how weird. But definitely weird.

Talthianon kept asking me questions. Did I feel any pain entering z-space? How about entering the Ascalin? Was I experiencing strange visions of Earth? What was the difference in mass between my morph and my body?

I was answering him as best I could when the Leeran rushed over.

<Friends,> they said. <The one you call Marco has vanished from the city.>


	9. Chapter 9

<I believe it to be some sort of snapback effect,> Talthianon explained.

<A snapback effect?> Galuit asked. We had reassembled; us remaining Animorphs, Ax, the Force Commander, and Talthianon. Three of us left. Three humans and an andalite to save a planet.

<Yes,> Talthianon continued. <I am not an expert on this particular sort of effect; nobody is, but...>

<Yes, yes, we're working with your best guess, I know,> Galuit snapped. <Go on.>

<It is possible... probable... that the stabilising targeting systems of their  _escafil_ matrices is self-correcting and, ah, moving their mass – and presumably mind-links... to where the matrix determines is their 'true' location. >

“Which is where?” Jake asked. “Zero-space or Earth?”

<I... do not know. I am not aware of this happening before. This event may create whole new avenues of zero-space theory and  _escafil_ computing. >

If Marco were with us, he'd have something sarcastic to say about that.

But he and Rachel were either safe on Earth, or dying in the nowhere of zero-space. Where we would be, soon enough.

“Is there a way to stop it?” Jake asked.

<No,> Talthianon said.

Jake's expression didn't change, but I saw it... stiffen, become a mask. The andalites wouldn't understand human expressions well enough to notice. Ax might. I glanced at him, but he seemed to be considering something on his own, not really paying attention.

<Jake,> Tobias said gently. <The mission.>

Jake spun to glare at the bird on my shoulder, almost snarling.

<Jake, act like a Prince!> Tobias added quickly, which Jake ignored. <Look, this is a bad situation. We're being pulled apart and we may very well be going off to die in zero-space and there is nothing we can do about it. But life sucks, okay? That's just how life is. Sometimes you're in a bad situation with no way out and there's nobody to help you and you have to keep going. You get up, you get dressed, you got to school – or in this case, blow up alien continents – and you keep going because  _that's what life is_ . These people need us, and the way we're going, we're not going to have that long. The universe doesn't care that this sucks, okay? And giving up now, sitting about and bemoaning our fates, won't help. So put your Prince face on and  _do your job_ . You don't even have to hold on for very long. Just until you disappear. >

That was the longest speech I'd ever heard from Tobias. Jake stared at him for a few second before squaring his shoulders and turning back to Talthianon. “Do we know how long we have?” he asked.

<No.>

He nodded and looked to Galuit. “Then we should proceed with the mission as quickly as possible. Is Aximili ready?”

<I have been fully briefed on the operation of the necessary equipment, Prince Jake,> Ax said.

“Good,” Jake said. “Let's go. And Ax?”

<Yes, Prince Jake?>

Jake's lips twitched into a smile. “You know. The usual.”

<Yes, Prince Jake.>


	10. Chapter 10

We skimmed above the ocean as seagulls to reach the shore again, spread wings held aloft by a little cushion of air above the waves. The sky was the bluish purple of a bruise, not the bright ultraviolet that a bird sees on Earth, and the ocean beneath us was oddly clear. I wondered if any Leeran-Controllers in the water would look up and be able to see us. Would they think anything strange of the weird animals in the sky? Hopefully, we were small enough not to be noticeable at that distance.

We were relying on Ax's sense of direction to get us back to the target site. He'd been briefed on the location of the explosives and the control for the sonic field. It'd be just our luck is he disappeared before we got there and we got lost... but then, without him, we couldn't complete the mission anyway.

Perhaps we should have just taken the technician.

It was late afternoon when we landed on the jewel-strewn shore and demorphed to discuss our next step.

<We have two targets,> Ax explained; <the last bomb, and the detonation system.>

<Is the last bomb vital?> Tobias asked. <Seems like kind of a vulnerable trap if it can't handle any duds.>

<This bomb is in a key position,> Ax explained. <The trap will trigger without it, but it will not be nearly as effective.>

“So it's a time gamble,” Jake said. “We go for a less effective trap, or the whole thing but risk disappearing before we can detonate it at all.” He glanced at me. “Cassie? You okay?”

“Hmm? Yeah.” I was trying to find a pattern. Rachel, then Marco. Two disappearances weren't enough to see a pattern even if it was there. But it niggled at me, the memory of Rachel and Marco being... next to each other, somehow. Like I should know, like it was ground I'd covered before. _Rachel, Marco_. Frustrating. 

Ax scraped the end of his tailblade through the sand, drawing a map. <The bomb is underground, through a tunnel lined with the explosive stone. It is safe to travel while the sonic field is inactive. The passage comes out behind enemy lines, within the fortifications we saw the andalite forces abandon during the attack.>

“And the control for the sonic field is also within those fortifications?” Jake asked.

<Yes.>

“So we need to sneak past enemy lines,” I said, “go through these caves and prime this bomb, come back out again, and then activate and detonate the sonic field?”

<That is correct.>

<Marco would say this is insane,> Tobias said.

“Rachel would say 'let's do it',” I replied. 

<And then Marco would say 'how'?>

Everyone looked at me.

“What?” I asked.

“You're the animal person,” Jake said. “We need to sneak in among the yeerks and get into this cave. What do you think?”

“With the Leeran-Controllers? Two options. We stay too high for them to read our thoughts, such as with birds of prey. Or we go too simple to read; flies again.”

<The overhead shields will almost certainly still be up, and it is possible that the anti-flight systems will be also,> Ax pointed out. <If that is the case, descending from above will be virtually impossible.>

<It's too much distance for flies,> Tobias added.

“Hmm.” I picked up a handful of sand and let it run through my fingers as I thought. “Range and simplicity are the only ways I can think of to fool Leeran-Controllers.”

“Maybe there won't be any Leeran-Controllers there,” Jake said hopefully. Then he shook his head. “No, there probably will be. Ugh.”

And we had an unknown amount of time to work with, before we too disappeared.  _Rachel, Marco_ . What was I missing? Why did it sound so normal for them to be next to each other? Was my mind just playing tricks on me?

“Can they read lizard minds, do you think?” Jake mused. “We could try to get close and then morph lizard.” 

“I don't know,” I shrugged, “but lizard brains are a lot more like mammal brains than they're like fly brains.” 

<If we were going to do that,> Tobias added, <we could get close and morph fly... the problem is if we intercept a Leeran-Controller before we morph. It only takes one to ruin everything.>

Just one Leeran-Controller getting too close before we could notice them. That was all it would take. We needed a way to walk among the Controllers without attracting attention, while avoiding any Leerans...

“How about,” I said slowly, “we just walk among the Controllers and don't attract any attention? And we avoid any Leerans?”

“Go on,” Jake said.

“Well. You guys remember feeling that Leeran mind-reading sense? It's definitely developed from something used to sense the environment. We could feel things that were invisible, things that lived in the stones... so I'm thinking, it can probably discriminate between stuff, right? Tobias and I have hork-bajir morphs. We go in as hork-bajir, in case we do get into a fight. You and Ax go in as Leerans, and see if you can use your minds to kind of... scout for other Leerans and steer us around them.”

“Do you think we can do that without all-out mind reading?” Jake asked. “I'd really rather... not do that again.”

I shrugged. “It should be possible, right? I mean, Leerans have to be able to filter important information and stuff, at least, kind of like our sense of hearing? They'd have to.” I wasn't entirely sure how right that was. They were too alien for me to predict. “They can switch it off, so...”

<We can at least give it a try,> Tobias suggested. <Get to the edge of the field thing, morph, if it works we walk in like we own the place...>

“Ax?” Jake asked.

<It... seems viable.>

“Good enough. Let's try that.”

We flew to the site, the journey once again made easy by the fact that the yeerks seemed to feel secure enough under their shields that they never bothered to look up, and after throwing a couple of stones to confirm that the sonic field and anti-flight sensors were both inactive, morphed. The hork-bajir in me wasn't comfortable on Leera. There were no trees, everything smelled strange, and it was hard to see anything in the fading light. I glanced at Tobias, who looked equally uncomfortable. It had never really occurred to me before that taking a hork-bajir from the trees was kind of like putting a cockroach in light. With luck, the hork-bajir-Controllers would be equally distracted and uncomfortable.

<Hmm,> Jake said, looking around with his big Leeran eyes. <This is weird.>

“What do the rocks look like?” I asked excitedly, trying not to trip over the words with my unfamiliar tongue. 

<Like rocks. Like everything does to a Leeran. Spiky and made of edges. But they're doing a weird thing to the telepathy. Um, Kind of like white noise?>

<It is like a heavy fog,> Ax corrected. <In the way that fog obstructs vision, these crystal rocks are obstructing the Leeran mind. Or something like it, anyway.>

<Good,> Tobias said. <Anything that stops the Leeran-Controllers from reading our minds is a bonus. Let's go.>

So we marched towards what we hoped to be the greatest single victory against the Yeerk Empire to date, right in the middle of a yeerk camp.


	11. Chapter 11

We figured that getting into the yeerk camp shouldn't be too difficult, provided we avoided any mind readers. The continent was theirs; they probably wouldn't be combat-ready in anything but the most technical sense, and if they did consider the possibility of an andalite counter-attack, they'd expect an army.

As the sky darkened, the camp itself became clearly visible, a beacon of light in the field of crystals. Hork-bajir moved about it, as did a few Leerans and some kind of lop-sided, monkey-like creatures. There was a low white metal wall around it, more as a marker than any kind of useful defense. Nobody stopped us from just walking right in.

The camp itself was pretty rough. The andalites seemed to have taken most of the useful things with them; the only signs that they'd been there were the little wall, a couple of small semicircular buildings that had been repurposed for storage, and a tall, silver-white tower in the center of the camp. Ax identified it as the generator for the anti-air shields. He also pointed out a small console build against the fence. <That is the interface for the sonic field generator,> he explained. <That is where we will need to be to reactivate it.>

<But first,> Jake said, <the final bomb. Can you show us where it is, Ax?>

Ax led us back outside the camp and over to a particularly large rock. I didn't even see the hole underneath it until he dropped into it. We followed. The crystalline stone left long splinters in my thick skin as I pressed myself against it and slid down at an angle into the ground. Soon, it evened out into a tunnel. I knew this because my movement in relation to gravity changes. I couldn't see the tunnel. I couldn't see anything.

<Hork-bajir eyes are useless in the dark,> I grumbled, not daring to make noise my speaking aloud.

<Aren't all eyes useless in the dark?> Tobias wondered. <I mean, if it's dark  _enough_ . >

<It should become light soon,> Ax said. <Be careful of the spires.>

<What do you mean the spi – agh!> Something slashed up my leg, and warm blood... or whatever hork-bajir have... poured down it. I'd walked into something sharp. Extremely sharp.

<A little to your left,> Jake said, and I felt a tentacle on my elbow, guiding me. Either Leeran eyes were good enough for whatever light we were getting down there, or he was using the mental 'fog' to navigate. I didn't ask which.

We kept walking through the cramped tunnel of sharp things, step by careful step. We took a hairpin turn, walked at a downward slope a little farther, squeezed past a partial cave-in. <This would be a really bad place to be claustrophobic,> I remarked.

<It's also a really bad place to be a bird,> Tobias said tightly. <I'm trying not to think about it.>

<Sorry.>

We lapsed into silence for a few minutes. Silence in the deep, oppressive dark.

<Prince Jake,> Ax said, <I feel that I must apologise for my earlier behaviour towards you. Towards all of you.> He said it quickly, in the manner of somebody acting on impulse.

<Is this really the time for this, Ax?> Jake asked.

<Yes. Because it may be the only time. We are disappearing and we are not certain where to. I was in error when – >

The tentacle on my elbow was no longer there. <Jake?> I asked.

Nothing.

<Jake?> I asked again.

<Prince Jake?> Ax asked.

<He's disappeared, hasn't he?> Tobias asked.

And then there were three.


	12. Chapter 12

<Who is in charge?> Ax asked, confused. <I never inquired about your system of seniority.>

<We don't have one,> Tobias said. <Cassie can be in charge.>

<Me? No. No, no, no. One of you can be in charge.>

<I was enlisted into this mission by Prince Galuit under the temporary command of Prince Jake,> Ax said. <I cannot be in charge.>

<Well how about we do the mission and argue about it later?> Tobias asked. <We're kind of on a clock here.>

It was becoming lighter, I realised; light enough for me to make out the sharp stoned and avoid them. The soft glow seemed to come from everywhere at once. It took me a moment (and a stumble into a thin spire of stone, breaking the tip) to realise what was happening. There was some kind of bioluminescent fungi or something growing inside the stone, close enough to the surface that a little light shone through. Amazing. I wished I could take some back with me. If we were even going back to Earth.

Rachel. Marco. Jake. It was a pattern, a pattern I should know.

The bomb was obvious when we saw it. It was a large lavender-coloured box sitting awkwardly in the narrow tunnel, looking very out of place. Ax levered the top off and started fiddling with wires.

_Rachel. Marco. Jake._

<Where does this cave even go?> Tobias asked, peering around. Like me, he was covered in cuts and scrapes, oozing dark hork-bajir blood.

<Part of it heads to the ocean,> Ax said. <Can you not feel the water vapor?>

Tobias and I looked at each other.

<Well, no. We're not amphibians right now.>

Ax flicked a dismissive tentacle. <The part that is important to the plan stretches under the Southern part of the continent. It will carry the power of the explosion to the next set of bombs.> He replaced the top of the box. <It is done.>

<That's all it took to set up a bomb?> Tobias asked.

<It was already 'set up'. I merely had to – >

“I'm next,” I said suddenly.

The other two looked at me.

I did know the pattern. Not Rachel, Marco, Jake. It was Jake, Marco, Rachel – Ax/Tobias, Cassie, Jake, Marco, Rachel. I'd stared at it for hours, repeated it to myself, trying to figure out why the order existed.

“It's hard to be sure with only three examples,” I explained quickly, trying not to trip over my unfamiliar hork-bajir tongue, “but I think we're disappearing in order of thought-speak range, shortest first. The range changes depending on weather conditions and barriers and morphs, but all other things being equal, the order doesn't change. Rachel has the shortest range. You two have the longest, and you're too close together for me to know which one is longer. I'd been thinking maybe it was just practice, that some of us spoke more thought-speak than others, but...” I shook my head. 

<It is... possible...> Ax said uncertainly, <that you have been measuring the depth or strength of zero-space anchorage. That is the only thing likely to be a common factor that I can think of, anyway. I do not know enough of physics to be sure.>

<Does it matter why the effect exists?> Tobias asked. <The important thing is, can we use it?>

<Perhaps,> Ax said. <It would depend on whether there are other factors unaccounted for, but I may be able to predict our times of disappearance. Cassie, I need to know the differences in range.>

I shook my head again. “I don't know. It was different each time. Only the order is constant.”

<Are they proportional of each other?>

Did Ax want me to do math in a deep tunnel next to a bomb? “I don't know! I didn't memorise the numbers! That's what writing things down is for.” I bit my lip. I couldn't remember the numbers, but I could remember some of the experiments. “Uh. From the McDonald's, this one time, I got a range on Rachel to the gas station on the corner, and on Tobias all the way to that children's clothing store on Miller Street. But I don't know how far apart – ”

<I do,> Tobias said. <I patrol the city a lot. I have a good idea of distances. Anything else, Cassie?>

“Uh... movie theater at the mall. I got Jake to the front of the first car park. Marco got Jake to the food court.”

<Good. What else do you remember?>

I told them. I told them about every thought-speak experiment I could remember. Tobias translated the stories into distance, and Ax snapped a piece of crystal from the wall and began etching complex grid and dot patterns into the side of the lavender box.

Finally, he announced, <Provided my calculations are correct – and they may not be – Cassie will vanish within twelve to fifteen Earth minutes. Tobias and myself will vanish in approximately twenty one Earth minutes.>

That wasn't enough time.

<There's no way we can walk back to the camp in that time!> Tobias said. <No way! And we can't fly in the dark, in such a confined space, through what is basically a passageway of knives!>

I was already partly demorphed. My mouth was human just in time for me to say comfortably, “A bat can.”

<Yes!> Ax flapped his tentacles. <A bat just might!>

“You guys need to get out of here,” I said. “When that grid is turned on, this whole place will be ready to blow.”

<We will go to the ocean,> Ax agreed.

Hands, human hands. Human feet. Human face. No time to rest. I focused on bat.

Ax and Tobias were demorphing. I couldn't wait around long enough to see what morphs they'd choose to flee. I shrank, the hair on my body thickened, leathery membrane stretched between my elongating fingers.

<I will tell you the codes,> Ax said. He picked me up in his thin andalite arms and looked me right in the eyes. I felt a weird jolt, like a kind of pressure in my brain, that disoriented me for a moment, but it was quickly gone.

<You do not have much time,> he said. <Do not hesitate. Do not wait and hope for us. We will be safe, and you have your mission. Go!> He tossed me lightly into the air, and I flapped hard to maintain altitude as I oriented myself and echolocated.

Image of the immediate environment clear in my mind, I shot forward.

Stone. Stone. Dip in the roof. Sharp turn. I dodged obstacles before I even registered them. Sometimes Jake talks about being 'in the zone' when playing computer games, in this weird kind of fugue state where his eyes seem to be directly plugged into his hands without all that messy business of going via his brain and spinal cord first, like his own mind is just a passenger being dragged along to watch his body act and react. That's what was happening. I was in 'the zone'.

It wasn't the first time. I was getting pretty good at letting animal instincts take over for high-pressure stuff that my human intelligence couldn't help with. But never before had so much ridden on it. I couldn't afford to panic. I couldn't afford to think about it too hard. I couldn't afford to do anything that might wrest control of my wings from whatever part of my nervous system – or the bat's nervous system – was keeping me so in balance with my environment, because a split second of hesitation or a single wrong move would leave splattered bat through the tunnel.

I couldn't afford to think about that, either.

It seemed like no time at all before I was around that last hairpin turn and then up, up into the open air. But there had been time, and I didn't know how much. How long did I have left? Ten minutes? Five minutes? Ten seconds?

I demorphed behind the stone and immediately focused on Leeran. Leeran eyes for a Leeran world, a Leeran mind to keep aware of threats. I could feel what Jake had called white noise, what Ax had described as a mental fog. I thought they were both wrong. The effect of the rocks was... like the mental equivalent of sun glare. It was something else confusing my senses, close enough to what they were meant to detect to be in the way. It made me feel sort of dizzy, but I had no time to worry about that. No time.

I casually strolled into camp.

Around me, hork-bajir moved about and patrolled and relaxed. Mostly free from the glare of the rock field, I could see each of their nervous systems as individual points in my immediate environment. They were very obviously alien, but still perfectly readable, with nerves moving down spines and spreading throughout limbs all from a central point in the skull. I could feel the thoughts and emotions within those central points. A lot of intense anger, people raging internally at the parasites controlling them with an effort that never made it as far as the spinal cord. Some worry, for loved ones at other encampments; worry that they might have died in battle, a side effect of their captors fighting in their stolen bodies. Some barely felt or thought anything, having given up. Those bothered me the most. And it was those that made me realise – I couldn't feel their yeerks. I guess whatever yeerks used for nerves were just too alien for the Leeran senses to deal with.

I could tell they were there, though. They were very much central to the minds of nearly every Controller.

I headed, casually, over to the control for the sonic field. I brushed my tentacled over the screen, and it came to life, shapes appearing above it that looked strange but identifiable to my Leeran vision. The andalite script made me dizzy, but I was prepared for it, I braced myself as...

… as thoughts that weren't mine, knowledge that wasn't mine, raced through my head and down my tentacles...

Okay, well, that I didn't expect, but my tentacles were racing through the holographic display above the console at astonishing speed, picking at symbols that flashed through my mind an instant earlier as knowledge I hadn't even known was there unpacked itself in my brain. I didn't know what any of them meant, but I knew to touch  _this_ one and then that one and then a square would come up and if I put my tentacle through it...

Yes! I was almost done.

And then the Leeran showed up.


	13. Chapter 13

I felt them approaching, a niggling presence in the back of my mind. I had the feeling that since I was right next to the rocks, I might be a little harder to read than they were. I might have a little bit better range. Maybe. I hoped.

How much better? Ten feet? A foot? None at all?

I knew,  _knew_ , that it would take several more seconds for me to activate the field. And then it would have to be triggered before somebody realised what I'd done, or they'd just deactivate it. I knew these things, thought these things, at the same time as I furiously tried to figure out what to do in the precious few seconds before the Leeran got close enough to sense me properly, because the moment they figured out I wasn't a Controller, they'd read what I was doing straight out of my thoughts, and then I was done for. 

Another part of my mind marvelled at how I was managing to think of so many things at once. I'd never noticed any change in my mental capacities beyond troublesome instincts when morphing before, but somehow there was so much  _room_ in a Leeran brain. Something to do with how much sensory information they needed to process, perhaps? I left that train of thought to its own devices and focused on the problem at hand.

What weapons did I have? My tentacles were useless for combat. I  _might_ be able to bite, if my enemy wasn't a hundred feet away. The computer in front of me... I couldn't risk damaging that, even if it had offensive capabilities. My mind. I could read the other Leeran's mind as surely as they could read mine. But not the yeerk's. Would the Leeran know anything of use? Would I even have time to use it?

Could the Leeran reading  _my_ mind be used as a weapon? I'd used thought-speak as a weapon before. Visser Three used it as a matter of course. Was there any way for me to mentally overwhelm the Leeran?

A step closer. I saw their mind. I saw their mind sweep over me.

I saw their mind focus on me.

I dredged up every terrible thought and memory that I could.

They could see it in my mind; I could see it in theirs. I could see, immediately, that it wasn't going to work. Leeran brains were excellent at working with a lot of data at once. The Leeran could handle anything that I could throw at it before it could get to the yeerk. No matter what it read, it...

But I wasn't just a Leeran any more than the Controller was. I could thought-speak. I couldn't feel the yeerk with my Leeran senses, but was there any reason I couldn't thought-speak to it?

The thought coursed through the Leeran-Controller's mind from mine, bouncing back and forth between us. And in the Controller's mind, I saw exactly what sensation to send.

I remembered the dark confines of the cave, seeing nothing and feeling little more than sudden, occasional pain. I remembered Jake's tentacle disappearing from my arm, all my friends disappearing one by one, the uncertainty. I remembered suffocating in the vast non-space of zero space. I remembered the look in Ax's eyes as he held his tail blade to Rachel's throat. I remembered darkness. And uncertainty. And being trapped. And isolation.

I drew those feelings from the memories, distilled them, and forced them all straight at the yeerk, all at once.

The Leeran fell to their knees.

Through it all, the information that Ax had put in my mind kept unravelling, directing my tentacles through the computer interface. I saw one last icon that my borrowed knowledge assured me meant that the field was powering up as I kept the mental pressure on the yeerk. But I could only channel so much negative feeling, and the yeerk was adapting to my assault.

I'd bought enough time to activate the field. I wasn't going to be able to buy any longer.

<Ax, Tobias, I hope you're out!> I screamed in private thought-speak right as the Leeran-Controller cried, <A spy! Explosives! Don't let it get away!>

The Controller had added a sort of mental tag to the warning to indicate me, and Dracon beams were being swung in my direction. I was defenseless. I was unarmed. They would kill me, and then they'd turn the field off, and then they'd go and disarm all the explosives and the planet would be lost.

I had one singular weapon.

I had the field of crystal stones spread out in every direction, just on the other side of the little wall.

Turns out Leerans, with their big, silly-looking frog legs, can jump pretty well.

I sailed straight over the wall. A Dracon beam hit my right leg and suddenly, I was one-legged. That was the least of my problems. The largest of my problems was coming at me fast, a field of natural knives I was falling straight into, all tense with a level of sound beyond my hearing range but that I could feel in the quality of their mental glare.

I landed.

The world exploded.


	14. Chapter 14

I could feel the stone beneath me crack, crumble, blow outward at my touch; I could feel it lose coherency even as it bit into my flesh and fragmented there, leaving hundreds of tiny embedded shards; somewhere in my vast Leeran brain the biology part of my mind was wondering whether those shards would disappear if I morphed, because unlike the yeerk mind control chip, I could sense them inside me, incorporate them... even as I wondered this I was flying back through the air, back over the fence into the yeerk camp, while the wave of destruction, of unmaking, rippled outward. It was soon out of my mental range, but I knew it would continue across the field, blowing up every fragment of stone, and race down below the ground in long buried fragments, rock blowing outward only to find no space to expand into, the pressure ripping the continent apart. It would race down the tunnel we had so carefully followed, a rolling wave of heat and force, and impact the bomb down there which would join it, increase and direct the explosion, pushing it down other paths, to other bombs...

I landed on the ground with a wet thump. There was no point in even trying to land properly. One of my legs was gone, I'd lost a couple of tentacles to shrapnel, and there was a huge, messy hole in my side. Unidentifiable alien organs and goo leaked out onto the ground, almost flourescent under the bright camp lighting. Powder from the exploded stone fell gently from the sky, the light reflecting from it making it appear pale white, like snow... no, like ash. And all around me, there were nervous systems, and my Leeran brain was taking in the information, parsing it, presenting it. It filtered out the unnecessary information and presented me with what I was focused on, like making out a single voice in a crowd.

Of course, I was too tired, too weak, too close to death to actually focus. So I was focused on what I was always focused on, what had kept my attention on so many long, weary nights in the past, had kept me going because I was needed.

_The animal is hurt. Find out how the animal is hurt._

Fragments of rock had hit several of the Controllers within the camp, and their pain receptors warned them – and me – about it quite insistently. But that was barely noticeable in the cacaphony of fear and confusion and mental anguish. Nobody knew what was happening. Controllers were afraid they were going to die. Controllers were afraid that their loved ones were dying. Controllers were fighting to wrest control from their yeerks, a force invisible to my Leeran senses as anything but an absence of control, a wall for an unwilling mind to push against. The rock dust settling over us confused my senses, created mirages and bizarre duplicates of the Controllers around me. Some of them were reaching for Dracon beams, some of them were looking for somebody to give orders, or just an explanation of what was happening.

Any moment now, somebody was going to look at me and remember what I was doing there. I had to morph. But I couldn't focus. That big Leeran brain, and I couldn't focus. I couldn't remember what Cassie looked like. The organs oozing out onto the ground weren't mine, certainly. The weird cartilaginous plates holding my basic body structure together... nope. The hork-bajir were close in shape, but not close enough to remind me what being human was like. And there was nobody around, nobody that wasn't from light-years away from my own home. No Animorphs.

I hoped Rachel, Jake and Marco were okay. I hoped Ax and Tobias had gotten out safely.

_Ax/Tobias, Cassie, Jake, Marco, Rachel_ . I kept the list in the front of my mind, like a mantra; like it could block out the hork-bajir mentally screaming for his  _kalashi_ but unable to open his mouth, or the one trying to fish long slivers of stone out of her thigh only to have them fragment into tinier, sharper pieces at her touch.  _Ax/Tobias, Cassie, Jake, Marco, Rachel_ .

Those hork-bajir didn't know yet. They didn't know the magnitude of what we'd done. They thought it was a localised explosion, the start of a bid to retake the continent; already they were gearing up for a land battle. They didn't realise that the very ground they stood on would soon be submerged, that the... oh, man, I was just beginning to realise what we'd done. What I'd done. A whole continent.  _The_ whole continent. I couldn't hold the thought for long. I could barely make it to the end of a thought. There was so little inside me. It was all spread out on the ground.

Above me, somewhere, were the stars. Through the bright lights and the stone dust and the anti-air shields, I couldn't see very many. I looked anyway. Was my star there, somewhere in the field of view, hidden by light? If I looked hard enough, would I be able to see the sun that lit Earth? I should have asked Ax. When I'd had a chance.

Someone stepped over me. Thinking of battle. I didn't move. Hard to move. Hard to breathe. Did Leerans breathe? Hoped not. Hard to...


	15. Chapter 15

Have you ever felt absolutely nothing?

They have these things called sensory deprivation tanks that I always used to want to try. They're these tubs of extremely saline water, dense enough that a human can just lie on it and float, kind of like the Dead Sea. The water and air is heated to exactly human body temperature. When they're closed, they're soundproof, and no light can get in. Apparently, they're supposed to be relaxing and disconcerting at the same time, and if you stay in there long enough you start to hallucinate because the mind just can't deal with not having any senses.

But even in one of those tanks, surely you could feel your own breath, your own pulse? You could clench your fists and feel the pressure of your nails on your palms? You could hum, and hear the sounds of your own voice? You could, at the very least, feel where your limbs were, know that you were lying down? I'm not sure that any human who wasn't in a coma had ever really felt absolutely nothing.

We were breaking  _all kinds_ of records lately.

My first assumption was, naturally, that I was dead. Who knows? Maybe I was. But after... how long? I didn't know how long... I realised I could feel something. Not much. Some muscle, I think. But it was something that existed, something that gave me feedback in a world where I did not know what was going on. I just... I wished that I could  _see_ .

And then I could. A fuzzy spot of light that was, for a moment, my whole world, resolved into colors, and then finally into shapes as a lens grew into my eye. I was lying on a floor, a pretty dirty one, and I couldn't move. I couldn't close my eye. It took me a moment to realise why; I didn't have eyelids or neck muscles or much at all, really, except an eye. Maybe there was some stuff behind the eye that I couldn't feel. All I really noticed was that I didn't have eyelids. And I really, really wanted them. Because what I was looking at was easily the grossest thing I had ever seen.

I'd seen limbs torn off. I'd lanced huge boils on injured animals and watched foul-smelling greenish-yellow pus ooze out. I'd eaten school lunches. But nothing compared to the sight in front of me.

It was an arm. A human arm. Humerus, radius, ulna, all the little bones in the hand. Tendons stretched over the fingers, creating a clever little system where muscles could be used to control the fingers without any muscles actually being in them. I could see all of this very clearly, because the arm did not yet have any skin. As I watched, muscles spread up the arm, crawling like giant red slugs, seeming to seek out the shoulder blade that was just coming into existence. Somewhere behind the arm was a human spine with a messy blob of brain tissue bulging at the top. It was nowhere near a complete brain. To the side, almost out of my field of focus but unfortunately still close enough for me to see what was happening, leathery skin crept into existence like a big, empty leather sack. Fine white fur and then longer blue-tipped fur crept over it until it looked like a rug made from andalite skin. At that point I realised that I had eye muscles, I could control what I was looking at; I pointed my eye away from my friends, down towards myself.

That, as it turned out, was a mistake.

I had ribs. I had a heart, sitting inside the ribs, arteries sprouting and stretching from it like a potato left in the pantry for too long; I could see it clearly because I didn't yet have intercostal muscles. I didn't have lungs, either. Which made me panic until I realised that I only had a small fraction of a circulatory system anyway. The morph, or whatever it was, was happening by itself, without my need to focus – which was good, because there was no way I'd be able to focus. I didn't have legs, but I had a pelvis, and I could identify most of the individual organs collecting in it from the books in the barn and from my own research – liver (does several highly important jobs, major target for hormonal or metabolic problems), kidneys (that still carried clues of our origins as sea life), appendix (useful for ruminating animals, less so for humans). Ligaments wrapped forward from my spine to encompass them; ligaments that would make a lot more sense dropping from the shoulders, but that had evolved long before bipedalism and were therefore a major source of back pain in humans, especially pregnant women. I tried to hold the sheer grossness at bay with hard, clinical facts, but when you get right down to it, every organ is basically a pulpy sponge for blood. They all do slightly different things with that blood, but that's what they are.

Also, nobody should ever have to see their own lymph nodes. They just shouldn't.

Eventually skin, the most under-appreciated of all organs, wrapped over my body, as did clothes. I ran my hands down my limbs and over my head, just to make sure that everything was there.

<We're alive!> Ax said, as if he couldn't really believe it. <I felt for certain that we would perish!>

Rachel, of course, was freaking out.

“What the hell?!” At least she had the presence of mind to hiss instead of scream as she glared about wildly. “Where are we?! What – ”

“Rachel,” I whispered, “it's okay; please calm down. I'll explain later.”

“Explain? How is this something you can explain? One minute we were all drifting off to sleep in the underwater city of psychic frog people and then _this_! And where are we?!”

<Where we began, I believe,> Ax said, sounding somewhat mystified. <In the ceiling of – >

He was cut off, because the floor, by which I mean the ceiling, gave way.

Fortunately, there wasn't far to fall. We were above the janitor's closet, and the closet, as it turned out, was more than half full of tightly packed boxes. I pushed somebody's elbow out of my way and tried to sit up.

“Well in hindsight, we should have expected that,” Marco whispered.

“Whoever's hand is on my butt is going to lose it if they don't move it,” Rachel said venemously. 

“I'm going to morph squirrel again before I suffocate,” I reported.

“Good idea,” Jake said. “There is no room in here.”

While I was shrinking, I found something sitting on one of the boxes. A small, smooth object made of metal and plastic, about the size of a quarter. Two long wires stretched from it. I was pretty sure I could figure out what it was, which meant that those wires had been embedded in one of our brains.

Ewww.

Jake and Ax shrunk around me, but Rachel and Marco were turning their attention to the boxes. I'd almost forgotten that we were there for a reason. They tore one open and looked inside.

“Huh,” Rachel said, sounding nonplussed. She looked at Marco, who shrugged and didn't even try to be funny.

<What?> I asked as my tail grew and fur crept over my tiny body. <What's this secret stuff that the yeerks are moving around?>

“Oatmeal,” Marco said.

<Uh, can somebody translate Marco-speak?>

Rachel pulled a smaller box out of the box. It was instant oatmeal, the kind you can buy in the supermarket.

“Hey, maple and ginger!” Marco exclaimed. “My favourite!” He pulled the top off and grabbed a packet, tearing it open.

“Are you crazy?” Rachel hissed, grabbing his wrist. “I mean firstly, eating raw oatmeal is gross. Second, that's yeerk stuff. It's probably poisonous or something.”

Marco immediately dropped the packet. “I thought of that,” he obviously lied. “I was just messing around.”

<Why would the yeerks be collecting poisoned oatmeal?> Ax wondered. <Also, what is oatmeal?>

<It's a food,> Jake said wearily. <We should bring some back with us. For, I don't know, analysis?>

“Analysis, Jake?” Rachel asked. “What kind of analysis, exactly? Are you gonna put some of the oatmeal under the big microscope in the Batcave?”

<Batman has a big microscope?> I asked.

“You watch Batman?” Marco asked.

“I have little sisters,” Rachel pointed out. “Little kids watch Batman.” She raised a brow at Marco, who did not deign to respond.

I took one of the little satchets and stuck it in my mouth, careful not to open it with my teeth. It was too big for my cheek pouches, so there was no way to hide the fact that I was carrying it. Pity. <Are we done here?> I asked.

<Yes,> Jake said. <Marco, Rachel, morph. Everyone, grab a satchet. And no eating the mysterious yeerk oatmeal. We're done here.>

We climbed back into the roof, which is no trouble at all for a squirrel, and got out of there. Out of the school, up the power line, away. Tobias joined us, flying overhead. <Ax-man! You're alive!>

<It appears that we all are, Tobias. I am glad.>

<You guys are way too happy to be alive for people who were so sure they could escape the explosion and make it to the ocean,> I pointed out.

<I did not actually know how far away the ocean was,> Ax admitted. <It was not part of the plan.>

<There's a long, horrible story there that you're going to have to tell me someday.>

<So the explosion thing worked?> Marco asked. <Excellent.>

<What explosion thing?> Rachel asked. <What is going on? Is anybody going to explain that?>

<Okay,> Tobias said, <this is kind of a long story...>


	16. Chapter 16

With Rachel caught up to date, we dropped our sachets off at Marco's place (mine was too far, Jake lived with a known Controller, and Rachel's sisters would probably eat them) and prepared to go home and get some real actual sleep in our real actual beds. Marco's Dad was at work, which meant that we could get a little rest before morphing again without having to make up any excuses and that Ax and Tobias didn't have to hide.

“Most ridiculous mission _ever_ ,” Rachel said.

“Oatmeal or Leera?” I asked.

“Leera, obviously. The oatmeal thing was trivial. And I'm still annoyed that you blew up a continent without me.”

“Hey,” I said, “blame physics.”

<Logically, couldn't you blame physics for everything?> Tobias asked. <Literally everything?>

<Jake?> Ax said tentatively. <I must speak with you.>

“I'm listening,” Jake said cautiously.

<I wish to apologise. To all of you. My behaviour on Leera was... inappropriate.> He glanced at us all with his stalk eyes while his main eyes stayed on Jake. Tobias' face was as expressionless as hawk faces always are. Rachel looked angry; I realised that the last meaningful interaction she'd had with Ax had been with his tail blade at her throat. Marco looked like he was trying to solve a complicated puzzle of some kind. I gave him an encouraging smile.

Jake just waited, arms crossed, for him to finish. His expression was neither hostile nor friendly.

<My fears were misplaced,> he continued, <and it was wrong of me to act the way I did simply out of relief of being with my own kind. If this mission has shown us anything, it is that one cannot assume the values and strengths and like-mindedness of another based merely on their species.>

“I think this mission has taught us that if you force and andalite who jumped ship at the earliest opportunity to return with the people he ditched, he awkwardly scrambles to make friends again,” Rachel said mildly.

<No! I am not asking for your forgiveness and I do not expect it. I am informing you of the facts. My behaviour was unbecoming of... no, it was perfectly becoming of an  _aristh_ . My behaviour was unbecoming of an Animorph. Jake, I understand that you will be angry with me, but... > He bowed and lowered his tail. <But if you would accept me, I will fight for you, Prince Jake, until  _you_ choose to release me of my vow. >

We all just kind of stared. I hoped the others appreciated the sheer magnitude of the vow Ax was making. I glanced at Jake's face – yes, he appreciated it.

“Ax,” Jake said finally.

Ax straightened up. <Yes?>

“Go home and get some sleep. That's an order.”

Relief washed through him. <Yes, Prince Jake,> he said.

“Oh. And Ax?”

<Yes, Prince Jake?>

“Don't call me Prince.”

<Yes, Prince Jake.>


	17. Chapter 17

I headed out to see Ax the next day. He was weaving something out of branches when I arrived, using his muscular tail to bend the tougher ones and securing them with smaller ones in his hands. He watched be approach with one stalk eye.

“Need any help?”

<No, thank you,> he replied. <When I was small, my parents were very insistent that I learn proper construction techniques. I admit I never expected the skill to be this useful.>

“What are you making?”

<A reinforcement frame for the walls of my scoop. As it stands now, it is a temporary field shelter, and too delicate for long-term living. I am... ah... 'upgrading' it, so that I do not have to repair it so often.>

I nodded and sat on the grass, watching him work. The grass around the scoop was thin and sparse, as if it had been mowed too short. I could see his hoof prints in a couple of bare patches of dirt, and I was struck with a sudden question: was the grass of the meadow enough to support an andalite long-term? Would he run out of food?

A stupid question. There were other meadows that he could move to.

“So,” I said after a couple of minutes. “How are you feeling?” 

Ax turned his main eyes to me. His hands gripped the reinforcement frame he was making. A component of a long-term home. How many times had he repaired a leak in the roof or wall of his flimsy scoop and told himself that this would be the last time, that there was no point in making it stronger because he'd find a way home any day now?

<Confused,> he said finally.

“Confused?” I frowned. I'd expected dispirited. Worried, maybe. But confused? “Are you worried that Jake is mad at you?” I probed.

<I am puzzled that he is not. He came by to see me earlier. And when I tried to apologise to Rachel for my aggression, she laughed at me. Humans are very strange.>

“Yeah,” I said with a little laugh, “that we are.”

Ax just watched me solemnly, like I was some kind of complicated puzzle he was trying to figure out. I was struck with a sudden memory from school; once, I'd tried to get my biology grade up by making a maze for a rat to navigate, but I couldn't seem to get the rat to try to find the food in it. It had been frustrating and seemed both important and impossible at the time. I was pretty sure I'd spent a lot of time looking at that rat in the same way that Ax was looking at me right then.

“What?” I asked. “What is it?”

<... Nothing. It is not important.>

“Not wanting to talk about something isn't the same as that thing not being important,” I said. “I'd... appreciate it if you would talk to me, though. I won't try to make you, but two heads are better than one, right?”

<Not always,> he said.

I nodded. I'd learned not to push. When I pushed people for information, it usually turned out badly. “I'm sorry you're still stuck here,” I said. “I know how much... well, I guess I can't know how much you wanted to go home. But I'm sorry.”

<I am where I need to be, I think,> he said. <Fighting a war demands sacrifice. I am lucky to be alive at all, and I might be without my people, but I am at least with my friends.> He smiled.

I nodded. “Perhaps, after this war, you can show your friends your planet,” I said. “I'd love to meet the people who thought that construction was an important skill for a child to have.”

<Perhaps.> He smiled again. <All andalite children learn some level of construction, as your children learn reading and writing,> he said. <It is considered a vital life skill.>

“See, now I'm just _more curious_!”

<Yes, I thought that you might be.> He looked up at the sky. <We did well on Leera, yes? We struck a major blow for freedom. We  _won_ . >

“Yeah. Yeah, we did.” It was a good feeling, victory. I wished I'd had more chances to get used to it. Leera was like that time we destroyed the Kandrona, times a million. We'd been hugely instrumental in saving a whole planet.

Now we just needed to do that again, but with Earth.

“Hey, that reminds me,” I said, “how did you know that they were going to blow up the continent? You figured that out long before we met the Force Commander, right?”

<It seemed fairly obvious,> he said with the mental equivalent of a shrug. <The yeerks needed the continent and were well-established on it. The Leerans did not. You have not been trained in battle tactics, and so did not see it, but...>

“Then why didn't the yeerks figure it out, if it's so obvious? I assume they _have_ been trained in battle tactics.” 

<They know that the Leerans require the open ground of the main continent to lay and tend their eggs,> Ax said darkly. <There are special forms of vegetation and microbes that are necessary to the maturation of the eggs. Taking the entire continent gives the yeerks the entire species with time. But once I remembered where I knew Prince Galuit-Enilon-Esgarrouth's name from, it was not difficult to figure out.>

I frowned. “He's used this strategy before?”

<No. He was a moderately successful Prince when I left the home planet. I suppose a lot has changed in that period of time, to give him such an important post. But I knew of him as a husband of Glen-Chieftainess Keilin-Telemar-Druin, who my mother spoke of often. She was lucky enough to be apprenticed under the Chieftainess for a short period of time. Keilin is famous for a particular technique that she developed to merge and stabilise genetically different organisms using a constant supply of clear, carefully treated saline water.>

“Like the ocean,” I said. “You seemed so upset that she was there... oh my god. You think they broke Seerow's Kindness.”

<No,> he said. <They would never do such a thing. Not technically. But... it was the concepts behind Keilin's invention that made it so revolutionary. Once it is done, my mother assures me, it looks very obvious. I myself am no biologist. But even if the Leerans do not pry through her mind for actual technology, putting the mind of the one who married these concepts together in close proximity to mind-readers who need such techniques for themselves has predictable consequences.> His mental voice was bitter. <No court would call it a violation of Seerow's Kindness. It  _worked_ ; it wasn't  _technology_ ; they didn't actually  _tell_ the Leerans anything; it would be unfeasible to set a precedent that ensured we had to keep our interactions with other species completely sterile of new perspectives or ideas. Besides, they are too famous and powerful and well-respected for anybody to think to accuse on a hunch. But... somehow I do not think that things would have gone any better for Seerow if he had helped the yeerks learn to build spaceships in a way that was not technically sharing technology instead of giving them spaceships. >

“You're worried they're working to the letter instead of the spirit of the law?” 

<... Yes.>

I frowned. That didn't sound right. Ax seemed too bothered to be worrying about one Prince dodging a law that his own brother had broken outright for us. But I supposed I could sort of see his point. When Ax had first joined us, he'd spoken a lot about honor and duty and fear being unworthy of a warrior and soforth. It was easy to see that he idolised his people, his government, his laws. Andalites were the greatest of all species, honorable defenders of the galaxy,  _et cetera, et cetera_ . He took the existence of Visser Three as some kind of personal affront, and called him an abomination. How often had he looked up at the stars and imagined returning to a perfect home, rejoining his great people? And he had had a chance to go back, briefly, and immediately been betrayed by a yeerk-sympathising captain, before seeing an important pair of andalites treat their most sacred law as a minor obstacle to achieve an impressive victory. I mean, sure, it sounded kind of dumb to me, but I wasn't Ax. He probably thought my breakdown over killing a termite queen had been kind of dumb. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked. 

<No. I must finish working on my scoop.> He turned back to the woven branches in his hands.

“Alright. Well, I'm always here.”

<Yes. Thank you.>

I nodded, and turned to leave the clearing.

<Cassie?>

I turned back. Ax was staring hard at his own hands, stalk eyes scanning behind him. Tail low. He looked nervous.

“What's the problem?” I asked gently.

<Captain Samalin, the traitor captain, he... he said he worked with my brother. With Elfangor. He was his tactical officer for awhile.>

“Hmm?”

<I tried to take the blame for giving you the morphing technology, but I am... not a good liar. He figured it out. And he told me that he admired Elfangor, and he would believe that he broke the rules, but he would never believe that he did wrong.>

“And you're worried because a guy who admired your brother turned out to be a dirtbag?” I shrugged. “I don't think listening to captain Samalin – ”

<No.> He whipped his head up to look at me. <The point is, he was right. Elfangor did break the rules. I would... I would never have expected that of him. He was a paragon of andalite honor. I still do not understand why he did what he did. But captain Samalin accepted it as perfectly natural. He... he knew my brother better than I did. And he admired what he knew, and he assumed that I was his ally and just did not understand, and he betrayed us all. It... it makes me wonder what else I do not know about Elfangor.>

I walked over, right in his face, so he had no choice but to meet my eyes unless he wanted to back up and physically turn his head away.

“Ax,” I said, “I only knew your brother for about five minutes. But even I know he was a hero. He gave us what we needed to fight, to survive. He gave his life in battle defending us, like all the other andalites up there did, and then he gave us a chance to defend ourselves. I don't care if someone like Samalin, who deliberately murdered his crew and brought down the Ascalin to help slavers, I don't care if he approves or disapproves. Your brother did good.”

<You can say that, and I can see it with hindsight,> Ax said, <but that is not the point. Had my brother not given you the morphing power, the yeerks would have made much more progress, enslaved many more people. If the yeerks had found me instead of you – and they very nearly did – then I would be dead or... worse. I have fought beside all of you, and I trust you with my life. I trust Prince Jake with my service. But Cassie,  _my brother had no way of knowing that_ . He did not know you. He did not know this planet. You could have been Controllers. You could have been like the figure in the World Almanac called Adolf Hitler. I love my brother, and I have always trusted him and known him to be good and honorable, but it is clear that there are things about him that I do not know and the more I think on it, the less sense it makes to assume that he gave you this power with any certainty that you would use it for good. He was not giving it to you; he was giving it to a small band of humans at random. I still do not understand why. But I am beginning to suspect that when I find the answer, I will not like it. >

I blinked at him. Wow. The events on Leera had shaken Ax's faith a lot more than I'd thought. “You've just started questioning everything, huh?”

<It appears to be the only way to trust anything.>

There wasn't much I could say about that. It was, after all, the basic tenet of my entire life philosophy.  _Your view of the universe should match up with reality as closely as possible. To do this, you must question everything. Faith is a flaw; necessary when one lacks the means or education to find the truth, but the most inferior form of 'knowledge'. Blind faith is evil. Keep what is real, discard what is false, and use hard evidence and rational thought to tell the difference._ Hard to fault somebody for putting that in practice, for ditching blind faith in his government and the stories he'd been taught in favor of critical thinking. That in itself wasn't the problem. It was the reasons driving the change that bothered me. 

Maybe I was being selfish, but I'd rather have a competent, emotionally stable Ax with a superiority complex and a bad case of blind patriotism than an Ax with a more realistic worldview because his previous one had been shattered and left him an unhappy, distrusting wreck. Of course, it wasn't my decision. All I could do was be there for him.

“You can trust us,” I said.

<Yes.> There wasn't doubt in his voice, but there was no relief, either. <Do you ever think about after the war, Cassie? About what our lives will be like?>

“I try to,” I said, “but... even if we save Earth, I'm not sure I can imagine it all that well. I mean, war aside, aliens are real. I have no idea how that will affect the world. Add the whole yeerk invasion to that... a war that happened under everyone's noses, ex-Controllers running around...” I shrugged. “I guess for you, though, it's easier to imagine. You know what your home looks like.”

<Not through the eyes of one charged with breaking Seerow's Kindness.>

“Ah.” What could I say to that? 'I'm sure they'll overlook it'? He knew his own people a lot better than I did. 

Ax, I realised, was trapped by more than sheer distance.

<I suppose you humans would call it ironic,> he said, <that the  _escafil_ technology will not matter. There are five of you and you do not have the technology to spread the power to others. And yet, we have seen human-Controllers on yeerk ships. Your people are very fast learners. Humans are gaining andalite technology – through the yeerks, through Seerow's curse. And yet, if humans become the next great scourge of the galaxy, and we look to how they gained their power, who shared with them... >

“Us? The 'next great scourge of the galaxy'?” I nearly laughed. Humans had done some dumb things, sure, but we hadn't... well, we'd wiped out all of our immediate evolutionary cousins, pruning out branch on the Tree of Life until we stood alone... we'd spread out from Africa across most of the world's land masses and done massive environmental damage, driving other life forms to extinction and causing ecological upheavals without a thought... we'd only barely figured out ourselves that slavery wasn't okay... didn't slaves still exist in some places?... we...

For a moment, I made myself stop thinking about my friends and family, and start thinking about the species that had done those things, thinking about us in a broader sense. Then I imagined us with zero-space travel.

It wasn't a pleasant thought.

But for Ax, I smiled reassuringly. “It'll be alright,” I said, because saying that it would be alright was my job.

“You can trust humans,” I lied. 


End file.
